As I started to write a blog post on a different topic, I did a little research related to the now famous question about one in five Americans not being able to find the United States on a world map. Various people have pointed that this is incorrect. According to a National Geographic/Roper poll, "Nearly all (94%) young Americans can find the United States on the world map".

So, I started doing a little digging. A Google search on “one in five Americans” brings up quotes like these: “One Out of Five Americans Consider Themselves Holy”, “1 in 5 Americans believe Sun revolves around the Earth”, “One in five Americans believe in alien abductions”, “one in five Americans believe that they have been the victim of identity fraud” and “one in five of us will die of some form of cancer.”

As best as I can make sense of this, one in five Americans believe in alien abductions. This leads them to believe that the sun revolves around the sun and that they are holy. For some reason, people believing in Ptolemic astronomy and alien abductions are also highly likely to be victimized by identity fraud and ultimately die of cancer.

Either that, or less than one in five Americans think critically enough about the media they consume. You make the call.