Ye, descent from a common ancestor

is truly an embarrasment so much so that the NSF has dropped it. I wonder what they know that we don’t?
Possibly how to read things in context.
In case anyone is interested, here is what happened. For the past 30 years the NSF has put out a survey to determine what people do know, or don’t know, about science. The questions were designed in such a way, that in 100 years the answers would still be relevant. If you have never seen it here are some of the questions from 2001-2008:
Antibiotics kill both viruses and bacteria, true or false?
The centre of the Earth is very hot, true or false?
How long does it take the Earth to go around the Sun?
Electrons are smaller than atoms, true or false?
As you can see the questions are very difficult and need a high level science background to understand. (Yes, that’s dripping with sarcasm.

) It’s sad to say but only 44 percent of women knew that it takes a year for the Earth to go around the Sun.
So, here is how things changed, they realized that U.S. citizens did particularly poorly compared to other countries on a couple of questions in previous years. I don’t remember the exact wording, but the questions were (more or less).
The universe started with a huge explosion, True/False.
All life forms were descended from a common ancestor, True/False.
U.S. citizens did comparatively well on the other questions compared to other countries, but on these two, they did poorly. However, if you changed the questions to:
According to the Big Bang theory, the universe started with a huge explosion, true/false.
According to the theory of Evolution, all life on Earth descended from a common ancestor, True/False.
U.S. citizens did much better, comparable with other industrialized nations. So… this means that U.S. citizens were answering the questions based on what they believed, not based on their knowledge of the theories. The NSF decided to drop the questions because they thought that they weren’t representative.
Many people were opposed for a few reasons:
- It would misconstrued by creationists and ID advocates. Which is evidently true from this thread.
- Because they had enough time to rephrase the question so that the answers would reflect the publics knowledge instead of their beliefs.
- And yes, Joshua Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education objected to it because he thought it “downplayed the controversy over teaching evolution in schools” (those last 5 words are actually important).
I know several people want to jump for joy because one person used the word “controversy”, but if you read it in context, he was talking about a social controversy, not a scientific one.
I’d like to think that those who have been misrepresenting this story will stop, perhaps even admit to a misunderstanding, but I am not hopeful.