NavList:

What a thoughtful 'contrarian' response. I agree 100%. I've been invited to speak at SkeptiCal 2014, and I will be writing on this very subject- not the pitfalls of casual surveys, but what is obvious to us and what has been told to us that we firmly believe and forget it was never observed directly by us. Everything that we cannot observe directly involves assumptions. Hubble's constant is highly suspicious in this regards and if the accepted value is changed, the Universe immediately changes size. Oops! Feel that?

In the US, late late night host Jay Leno had a recurring feature they called Jaywalking. He would ask a person on the street some question, some rather obscure, and of course they would cherry pick the particularly 'clueless' responses for the show. That rankled me. And most of the answers Jay didn't know before rehearsal.

One last thought- The biography of Richard Feynman,"Infinity" directed and written by Matthew Broderick, contains a beautiful scene in which Feynman and his dad are walking through the forest. Feynman asks his dad, "Dad, what is the name of that bird?" Dad responds, Knowing the name of that bird tells us nothing about it. It tells us NOTHING about birds. It's not an important." question"

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