The general public's ability to answer basic questions about science has hardly changed. For instance, in 2001, only about 50 percent of NSF survey respondents knew that the earliest humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs, that it takes Earth one year to go around the Sun, that electrons are smaller than atoms, and that antibiotics do not kill viruses.
For the first time, a majority (53 percent) of NSF survey respondents answered "true" to the statement "human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals."
On a 10-question "pop quiz" on biotechnology, most Americans, Europeans, and Canadians gave the incorrect answer (true) to the statement "ordinary tomatoes do not contain genes, while genetically modified tomatoes do"
