The Earth doesn't revolve around useless scientific polls

by Beth Teitell
Thursday, May 2, 2002

Some things sound worse than they are. Spending $240 on a pair of sandals, for example, or letting your child eat two-week-old potato chips from the base of her car seat. As many of us know, there may be reasons, perfectly good reasons.

The latest entry into this yeah-it-seems-bad-but . . . category is a new survey, which found that just slightly more than half of American adults - 54 percent - know it takes the Earth one year to revolve around the sun.

This is exactly the kind of horrifying factoid those smartypants commentators love to pounce on as proof of what idiots we (their viewers and readers) are. And yet, how relevant is the Earth's orbit to most people's lives? Especially now that we have tanning booths, and the sunless tanners aren't as orangey as they once were?

Americans are nothing if not practical, and unless you're an astronomer or an astrologer, why waste brain space on something that rarely - if ever - comes up at cocktail parties? Better you should spend time educating yourself about the particulars of the Robert Blake case, or watching the ``E! True Hollywood Story'' about Bill Bixby.

``You could probably get through your whole adult life ignorant of the Earth's little rotation schedule and it wouldn't make one bit of difference,'' one self-described ``nonscience person'' told me.

``The only time it comes up,'' she explained, ``is on those stupid surveys. As long as you avoid those, you're fine. It's much more important to know your gym's schedule, or the street cleaning/parking schedule, than what the Earth as a whole is doing.''

The survey was conducted by the National Science Foundation, and a large part of the problem - I guess unsurprisingly - is the narrow definition of what ``revolves around'' means. Technically, yes, we're revolving around the sun, not the Red Sox, or Britney Spears, or work or Newbury Street.

And yet, which gets - and deserves - more attention day in and day out, the path we take around some distant star, or the actions of much closer stars, or your boss, or the hostess at the Armani cafe?

In addition to concluding that most people don't know anything about science, the survey also found that what little we do know is probably bunk. Many Americans, the National Science Foundation said, may be quick to accept phony science reports.

Not me. When it comes to science, I believe only those cosmetic surgery and diet reports I read in respected peer-review journals, such as Glamour or Self.

I don't know if it's a coincidence or what, but one of the most trusted of the women's technical publications, Elle, even weighed in on the l'il ole Earth recently: ``Finally!'' a cover line on the April issue read, ``The Most Perfect Jeans on Earth.''

Reading the story got me in an earthy mood, so I decided to do a survey of my own, and asked a friend how long it takes our planet to make it around the sun.

She looked kind of panicky. ``I just know the world doesn't revolve around me,'' she said. ``My mother drilled that into my head when I was growing up.

``What it does revolve around, I'm not sure,'' she concluded. ``But that's what they have encylopedias for.''

She walked away, vowing to look up the information and then try to ``retain it for next time.''