Americans dumb? well how about gullible...

I live in California so believe me I have heard every type of crazy theory. This is from Boing Boing:

http://boingboing.net/2013/04/15/12-mil ... eve-l.html

I mean this in jest so I hope we can avoid the name calling from the last "dumb American" thread

I read somewhere that 1 in 5 believe that the sun rotates around the earth. Unfortunately this was the conclusion of a serious survey.

It says 12 million? I'd believe maybe 12,000 if it was a large cult...

It might explain why David Ike does so well out there

Wait,

What?

Are we gullible if we even believe the results of this survey?

Who are we to take the pith? We believed Tony Blair when he said Iraq had WMD, and even when it had been proven they hadn't the good people of Blighty merrily voted the big fibber back into power. Compared to the lizard people (who actually run belgium as it happens) some of the lies our brethren have swallowed are truly breathtaking.

Some people even think that the whole Thatcher funeral exercise is something other than a PR campaign for David Cameron FFS.

And the population of Denmark who voted for our current government must be feeling very duped at the moment.

What, the widely-villified and almost universally-criticised (even by papers like the Telegraph) Thatcher funeral excercise? Yup, that's a Tory PR win right there

As for the original story, here's the actual press release:

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/ ... 040213.pdf

Here's the last paragraph:

PPP surveyed 1,247 registered American voters from March 27th to 30th. The margin of error for the overall sample is +/-2.8%. This poll was not paid for or authorized by any campaign or political organization. PPP surveys are conducted through automated telephone interviews.

So in fact 50 people* told a recorded voice that they believed in lizard people. It seems highly likely that most of those either misunderstood the question or were simply taking the piss. The perils of extrapolation...

*it's also a spectacularly self-selecting group of respondents, ie those who don't just immediately hang up when they get an automated call and those who happen to be in when the phone goes. I don't know when they made the calls, but you won't get a representative cross-section of the population by phoning people at home during office hours.