One in three South Africans don’t know that the earth revolves around the sun, according to a test with 10 basic science questions, a newspaper report said on Sunday.
The average South African only cracked half of the questions, put to a thousand people via Media24’s online Forum24, Rapport said.
The 2 200 Americans who answered the same questions by the National Science Foundation got 6,5 out of 10.
South Africans were worst at the question: “Antibiotics kill viruses and bacteria, true or false?” with only 28% knowing the answer — white, English speakers faring best at this question (56%).
South Africans did best on the true or false statement “the centre of the earth is very hot”, with 78% getting it right.
On the question of whether man evolved from animals, 49% said “yes”, 41% “no” and 10 percent said they did not know.
George Claassen, a science journalism lecturer at Stellenbosch University, said a weak knowledge of basic science is not a joke. It can kill people and lead to exploitation through quackery, he said. — Sapa