* About 22 percent of Americans believe that President Bush knew of the 9/11 attacks in advance (Rasmussen, 2007).
* Sixteen percent (and Rosie O'Donnell) believe that explosives brought down the World Trade Center (Scripps Howard/Ohio University, 2006).
* About 17 percent believe that "Creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster will one day be discovered by science" (Baylor Religion Survey, 2005).
* Twenty-two percent of Americans believed in five or more of the following 10 pseudoscientific beliefs: "extrasensory perception (ESP), that houses can be haunted, ghosts/spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/situations, telepathy/communication between minds without using traditional senses, clairvoyance/the power of the mind to know the past and predict the future, astrology/that the position of the stars and planets affect people's lives, that people can communicate mentally with someone who has died, witches, reincarnation/the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death, and channeling/allowing a "spirit-being" to temporarily assume control of a body" (NSF 2001).
Even those handfuls are greater than the proportion of Americans with confidence in Congress – which still doesn't make the latter any less perplexing. One suspects that, if given an option stated explicitly in Fox's Elvis poll, the great majority would have agreed: "Those people are crazy." |