Most of those are tin-foil hat notions, but "Aliens exist" should not be conflated with the notion that "Aliens exist and anally probe people in advance of an invasion".

Babwa Wawa: Most of those are tin-foil hat notions, but "Aliens exist" should not be conflated with the notion that "Aliens exist and anally probe people in advance of an invasion".

And the question was simply "Do you believe aliens exist, or not?" Frankly, that number is terrifyingly low. 47% of people think aliens do not exist? Earth is the only place in the entire universe with any life on it whatsoever? Now I agree with you that most people when asked that question are thinking it means "intelligent, space-faring aliens exist and have visited Earth" and not "a young planet in the Goldilocks zone of its star 180,000 light years away has managed to cultivate plant life" but still.

Don't forget Lizard Jeebus. He's a supporter of same-lizard marriage because it helps regulate body temperature.

exick: 47% of people think aliens do not exist?

The existence of aliens probably conflicts with a lot of people's religious beliefs. Seems like a waste of space for us to be the only ones in the entire universe.

(never thought I'd get to use this again after election day)

I'm very surprised that "The Government Controls Minds with TV", only came in at 15%.
TV content, and lack of content has been influencing us since it's inception, by setting social norms of dress, behavior, purchasing decisions, morality etc.

TV is the main reason Americans think their country is number 1 in every area, when in fact, we are number one in the world at absolutely nothing, except military might.
It sure is fun cheering on the fighter jets that buzz The Superbowl though.

What is missing is just as important as what is there, as evidenced by the ban of showing soldiers' caskets at the beginning of the Iraq war, or the cancellation of The Smothers Brothers because of their opposition to the Vietnam war at a time when the government was feeding the networks box scores of the killed and wounded on a daily basis.

Every night we saw : United States dead: 14
                                    Communist dead: 187
Just to create the illusion that we were 'winning', and preventing communism from spreading to our shores.

"Drag Net", which was HEAVILY anti-drug, and anti-hippy, painted the anti war protesters as being the biggest weirdos ever to grace the planet.
It is also the reason that the catastrophic War On Drugs^TM came to be, as it duped most of middle America into thinking that if they smoked a joint, their baby would drown in the bathtub, or they would turn to prostitution to support their marijuana habit, but only after they had painted their face blue and clawed out their own eyes.
Seriously, that show would have been funny as hell if it weren't so damaging.

Interesting, but it bugs me that they are taking what was a very small sample group and extrapolating it out to the entire population. That's not actually how polls work.

6% of the 1,247 people they got to answer the phone at the end of March think Osama Bin Laden is still alive. That means they found 75 people who thought that was possible. They found 62 people who think Paul McCartney died in 1966, and 50 people who think lizard people rule the world. In all likelihood, these are all the same few dozen whackadoos.

This survey proves that a few dozen people willing to answer a survey are either confirmed nutjobs, or are having a lark with the surveys.

What it DOES NOT PROVE, in any way, shape or form, is that 12,556,562 Americans believe Lizard People control politics, or that 15,695,702  Americans believe Paul McCartney died 47 years ago, or that 18,834,842 americans believe Osama Bin Laden is still alive. Not only does it NOT prove that, it is a stretch to even argue that it strongly indicates that, given a sample set of something like .000003 of the population group.

I know many Farkers here understand how polls work, but it bugs me when idiot reporters present reckless extrapolations as "fact" with narry a mention of the sample set or even a cursory acknowlegement of the limitations of polling samples.

I'm all out of bubblegum

BojanglesPaladin: 6% of the 1,247 people they got to answer the phone at the end of March think Osama Bin Laden is still alive. That means they found 75 people who thought that was possible. They found 62 people who think Paul McCartney died in 1966, and 50 people who think lizard people rule the world. In all likelihood, these are all the same few dozen whackadoos.

I don't know these are the same people polled.  19% believe in Aliens.  21% believe UFOs landed in Roswell.

We also have to remember that 5% of the population suffers from functional mental retardation, and frankly, the bottom quintile of any population deserves to be ignored.