Scientific illiteracy is a plague on American society. Some argue that this decline in basic scientific knowledge results from a sinister plot by religious fundamentalists, anti-science corporate lobbyists and their minions in the government; here at the Antisocial Network, we figure that it's instead a natural outgrowth of laziness and obsession with celebrities instead of knowledge. If only more people were obsessed with Bill Nye or Neil deGrasse Tyson...It's a safe bet that the stupidification of the internet by dumbass freelancers at sites like eHow and HubPages hasn't helped matters much. Take for instance, this question posed on a HubPages discussion forum by Peter X Dunn. Pete wants to know if a nifty Hubble image proves that there's no God and the Biblical creation story is a myth. He's entitled, but where Pete tripped the Antisocial Network's dumbass-detection algorithm is this statement:
"The Solar System... is approximately 4.5 billion years old (a figure arrived at by radio carbon [sic] dating meteorites)"There are three problems with the way Dunn poses his question:
Of course, Dunn means radiometric dating instead of "radio carbon," presumably using uranium-lead or one of several other long-half life decay series. But that's not what he said so, for failure to evaluate the reasonableness of his statement he's he's our dumbass of the day. For what it's worth, the eight or so other participants in the discussion, none of whom called him on his error(s), are equally dumbasses... but still, Pete wins the booby prize: the Dumbass of the Day award. Yay, Pete.
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