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According to a 2014 NPR poll 26% of Americans believe the sun revolves around the Earth.

The survey of 2,200 people in the United States was conducted by the NSF in 2012 and released on Friday at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

To the question "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth," 26 percent of those surveyed answered incorrectly.

This seems too ridiculous. Is there any evidence other than this to back it up?

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user35859
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    Sort of: a 2012 survey did find that 74% of Americans polled answered that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and thus 26% did not answer that. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind14/content/chapter-7/chapter-7.pdf – called2voyage Sep 19 '16 at 14:22
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    It would be nice to see the methodology of that survey though. – called2voyage Sep 19 '16 at 14:23
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    Here are some more details: http://www.businessinsider.com/national-science-foundation-survey-2014-2?IR=T –  Sep 19 '16 at 14:26
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    Deleted Linguistic prescriptivist versus descriptivist arguments about the definition of "American", and pedantry about the centre of mass of the combined orbits of the Sun and Earth. Neither discussion was helping answer or clarify the question. Take it to English.SE or Astronomy.SE respectively. – Oddthinking Sep 20 '16 at 02:22
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/45620/discussion-on-question-by-user35859-do-26-of-americans-believe-the-sun-revolves). – Oddthinking Sep 20 '16 at 04:29
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    I would personally answer wrong if asked, just to see a funny poll later on. – JonathanReez Sep 20 '16 at 08:40
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    I work in orbital mechanics. "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth" is not a good question because all frames of reference are equally valid. When modeling the behavior of a spacecraft orbiting the Earth, a frame that has the spacecraft and the Sun orbiting the Earth yields better results than does a frame that has the Sun, the Earth, all the other planets, and the spacecraft orbiting the solar system barycenter. That said, take away the Earth orbiting spacecraft and you'll get better results using the solar system barycenter as the reference point. – David Hammen Sep 20 '16 at 11:47
  • There's also [people that think the Earth is flat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_societies), so I'm not sure why this is surprising. – David Starkey Sep 20 '16 at 13:39
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    Both answers were correct, it depends on the point of reference. I think heliocentric people who think the Sun is the absolute center of the universe are even more ridiculous than the geocentric people they make fun of. – Oriol Sep 20 '16 at 15:50
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    74% of Americans not understanding Relativity is hardly surprising. – Hans Malherbe Sep 20 '16 at 15:57
  • @DavidHammen Yes, people who asked the question do not know the Newton's third law... – Boiethios Sep 20 '16 at 16:11
  • It depends on where you put origin of your coordinates. If you place it in the centre of Earth, the Sun rotates around the Earth. In peculiar way, actually. If you place the origin in the centre of Sun, the Earth is rotating around the Sun and around its axis. So you cannot answer the question wrong. You cannot answer it right either. :) – Crowley Sep 20 '16 at 16:48
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    Every poll measures the frequency of specific answers to the polling question, not the actual belief. In other words, 26% of respondents choose the wrong answer, but that doesn't mean 26% believe the wrong answer. Some portion do; some portion misread the question; some portion are lairs; some portion are jokers. – Ask About Monica Sep 20 '16 at 17:38
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    @kbelder: Exactly, this is not a test for school. This is not for a job application. This is not a game show. There is nothing to lose in answering incorrectly, even if there were a clearly incorrect answer. Polls and surveys are probably best for opinions and sentiment, and even then it must be 100% safe for respondents to answer honestly, which is often not the case. – Michael Sep 20 '16 at 22:46
  • @DavidHammen, and others - I think you guys are being a bid too pedantic in interpreting the poll results. The question is clearly referring to the daily cycles of daylight and night time and the cause of those cycles. In that regard, no, it's not "both" or "depends." – PoloHoleSet Sep 21 '16 at 16:15
  • @AndrewMattson -- You are writing about rotation rather than revolution (aka orbiting). That said, there are some people who think that the Sun and stars rotate about the Earth. Flat earthers, for example. – David Hammen Sep 22 '16 at 02:10
  • You know America is not a country but a continent? Two continents, to be exact. The quote says United States so the title should say it too. – RedSonja Sep 22 '16 at 07:43
  • @DavidHammen - Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that there are people who think the Sun and stars rotate around the Earth - that's exactly what the public opinion poll was trying to get at. My point is that taking into account "all frames of reference are equally valid" or "it depends upon the point of reference" obscures the very simple thing they are trying to find out. How many people understand, from the perspective of a human on the earth, that our cycles of day and night are caused by our rotation, and not revolution of the universe around the Earth? – PoloHoleSet Sep 22 '16 at 13:36
  • @RedSonja See http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/35187/do-26-of-americans-believe-the-sun-revolves-around-the-earth#comment133019_35187. Oddthinking deleted comments regarding that and asked people to take it elsewhere. – called2voyage Sep 22 '16 at 14:23
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    People saying that all frames of reference are equally valid are indulging in the worst kind of pedantry. They are also wrong. Read this, for example. (https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/18169/what-point-does-earth-actually-orbit) – bornfromanegg Sep 13 '19 at 07:57

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Is there any evidence other than this to back it up?

A Gallup poll in 1999 found that 18% of Americans thought the Sun revolves around the earth.

So there is support for the notion that substantial numbers of people in the US hold this belief.

A 2005 EU survey is reported as finding that a higher percentage of Europeans held the same view.

The sample size of this sort of survey seems to be around one or two thousand.

RedGrittyBrick
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    I thought this was probably due to misleading wording of the question, but I was wrong. The European question is slightly misleading (*"The Sun goes around the Earth - True/False"*.), which explains the higher percentage there (29%), but the American question was *"As far as you know, does the earth revolve around the sun, or does the sun revolve around the earth?"*, which is quite hard to misunderstand. – Peter Sep 19 '16 at 17:27
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    @Peter Barring confusion over the meaning of "revolve", which may be more common than it should in modern American society. – JAB Sep 19 '16 at 17:49
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    @JAB Alternatively, how about: The Sun and the Earth certainly revolve. And, I drive around town; the speaker talks around the subject. So, the Sun revolves around the Earth - as opposed to revolving nowhere near the Earth. Completely correct statement: poor phrasing of the question. – SusanW Sep 19 '16 at 18:08
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    There's so much wrong in these questions. (A) the correct question is "does the sun revolve daily around the Earth or does the Earth spin on itself?" and (B) alternatively "does the sun revolve yearly around the Earth, the sun revolve yearly around the Eart, or do they spin around each other?" where you can see that both "true" and "false" are actually the wrong answers anyways... – Sklivvz Sep 19 '16 at 18:19
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    I agree this is probably due to confusion about what "A revolves around B" means. If you showed them diagrams of the Earth revolving around the sun and vice-versa, I think far fewer people would get it wrong. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Sep 19 '16 at 19:24
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    There will also be a subset of people who gave that answer deliberately. – Michael Richardson Sep 19 '16 at 20:30
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    Both orbit around each their barycenter.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter – Konstantinos Sep 19 '16 at 21:10
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    @BlueRaja So people might not be completely incompetent in the field of astronomy, they just can't speak their native tongue? That's not that uplifting. – Voo Sep 19 '16 at 21:56
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    As @MichaelRichardson points out, people might not be honest in surveys... and on the other hand [73.6% of statistics are made up on the spot](http://www.businessinsider.com/736-of-all-statistics-are-made-up-2010-2) – WernerCD Sep 20 '16 at 00:48
  • Are these results statistically significant? 1000-2000 people seems too small a sample to me. –  Sep 20 '16 at 09:18
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    @DmitriPisarenko: Significance does not really apply to the statement about percentage of people answering a certain way. It's definitely significant compared to random guessing (in a good way - there is a very low chance of getting the consensus correct answer with that level of confidence by flipping a coin 2000 times). If the authors want to claim the survey is representative of all Americans, then they could quote some error range such as "26% +- 2% of Americans appear to believe that . . .", although that quickly gets complicated if the sample of 2000 is not representative of population. – Neil Slater Sep 20 '16 at 09:37
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    @DmitriPisarenko That's a common sample size for electoral polls, and Gallup and NPR are considered reputable pollsters (e.g. http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/). Of course there's an error margin, as with any statistics, but with a proper poll that sample size is considered enough for a +/-~2-3% margin. – Blaisorblade Sep 20 '16 at 14:13