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Seven percent of all American adults believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows, according to a nationally representative online survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy.
If you do the math, that works out to 16.4 million misinformed, milk-drinking people. The equivalent of the population of Pennsylvania (and then some!) does not know that chocolate milk is milk, cocoa and sugar.
[...] For decades, observers in agriculture, nutrition and education have griped that many Americans are basically agriculturally illiterate. They don't know where food is grown, how it gets to stores — or even, in the case of chocolate milk, what's in it.
[...] Upton and other educators are quick to caution that these conclusions don't apply across the board. Studies have shown that people who live in agricultural communities tend to know a bit more about where their food comes from, as do people with higher education levels and household incomes.
[...] In some ways, this ignorance is perfectly logical. The writer and historian Ann Vileisis has argued that it developed in lockstep with the industrial food system.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:06AM (11 children)
It pains me to admit that I am, technically, a scientist. In my defense, I am retired.
What I want to ask, is what happened to reporting that whole, you know, confidence level thing? And, of course, the methods for establishing confidence.
I'd like to ask someone to reproduce this, but it's not gonna happen. No, no... Nobody ever listens to a David. We shall just slap this down into the record books as being certain. 7 out of 100 people you see, with some slight variance but I don't have to account for that as I bet they didn't, will believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
I am really, really fucking rural. As in, my milk comes from the neighbor's farm - and that milk is sold in the local stores. Well, for some definition of local. Not even a fucking five year old child, at least here, believes that.
Alas, this begins a rant on soft sciences and reproducibility. I'll spare you the specifics and assume you're smarter than I.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:54AM (2 children)
There's no point in listing the confidence interval in a country that has no confidence in science at all. Doesn't matter how tight the confidence is, people still won't believe it because scientists haven't completely nailed down absolutely every possible angle, including the ones that Alex Jones just made up.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:18AM (1 child)
We see it here every day, intelligent people searching for reasons to disbelieve science. I'm all for critical thinking, but confirmation bias is also a real problem.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @05:05AM
I gotta go fishing in the morning(ish). Otherwise, that's a good effort to get a KGIII rant. I don't usually get angry, but the state of science education makes me angry.
However...
Do NOT think that my anger is only directed at one side of the political spectrum. Yeah, I'm gonna stop now, take my off-topic mod, and just go to sleep soon.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:55AM (3 children)
Or rather, 7 out of 100 people (maybe, since you can't actually know that there weren't many people voting multiple times) will claim, in an online survey, to believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
I agree that this isn't sound science, but it's par for the course for these idiotic surveys. If you can't verify the issue objectively, then this is just a waste of time. At least you can later find out election results, but you can't objectively determine what these people really believe, making this junk science.
I'm as tired of it as you are, and tired of the media reporting on it as if it's valid science.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:24AM (2 children)
I don't even care. I'll agree with their silly numbers. It's still bullshit! ;-) Ain't no way in hell - at least in my neighborhood - you can find even 1:100 people to say chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
Trust me, you sure as hell don't want me to get started on my rant about the media and science journalism. It may well take months. ;-) I f*cking have a rant, maybe two.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:26AM
*can't*
Stupid marijuana.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:08PM
Post rants on your soylent journal.
Then you can just say See My Journal.
Read your own journal 6 months later and see if you still believe it. If so leave it alone.
Rinse Repeat. Can be quite Therapeutic.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 17 2017, @05:20AM (3 children)
Oh, I get all your criticism and agree. A lot of these studies are crap from a stats standpoint. On the other hand, plenty of other studies over the years have shown the considerable ignorance of people about basic food source stuff. So this study sounds plausible, and even if it isn't accurate, other similar misconceptions are likely widespread.
I didn't see a link to an actual study with detailed results. It would help if someone posted a link.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:10AM
Yeah, I am really skeptical. I am a scientist, I guess. I'm really a mathematician who used the scientific method to model traffic. So, I admit I am biased with regards to the soft sciences. If someone has a link to the paper, I am more than happy to rip into it, as soon as I have the time.
I'm going to guess, and this is a hunch, that it was a self selected survey. That's not science. I sometimes get bored and fill those out. In the comments section, after filling them with trash, I tell them to sanitize their inputs. This has not had any meaningful results, but it amuses me. I am easily amused.
I should still be sleeping.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:14PM (1 child)
Actually, it will probably turn out that this "study" was a troll, published to see how many people would be suckered by some totally bogus claims made in the name of "Science", and therefore duped into outrage even though they themselves do not know a single person who believes the brown cows nonsense.
But hey, thanks for playing along! Their internet gullibility study is coming along nicely.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday June 17 2017, @11:52PM
Please message me when you discover proof that this "study" was a "troll." I'll be waiting.
I think it's much more likely to be a poorly designed "study," like the vast majority of such studies in most disciplines these days. By the way, who exactly other than this thread is claiming this is a SCIENCE (with a capital S)? It's a poll. Yes, there are more and less statistically valid ways of taking polls, but rarely do I consider a public poll to be "Science."
What I do know is that time and time again, polls have shown large numbers of Americans believe in all sorts of nonsense. Would I be surprised if this was yet another sort of nonsense Americans believe in? No, not at all. Nor would I be "outraged." At most, I'd view it as "par for the course." Would I be surprised if this poll was completely bogus and had incredibly bad methodology that makes the results meaningless -- or that a better survey found the belief much less widespread? No, not at all.
But what you're arguing is about the percentage of people who belief in Bigfoot vs. the Virgin Birth of Jesus vs. Lizard people run the country vs. Ancient Alien Astronauts vs. chocolate-producing cows. Are you seriously arguing the last one is THAT much less plausible or that much more nonsensical so we should immediately discount a poll as wrong?