Americans who believe the Earth is flat

Between 2011 and 2022, the percentage of Americans who believe the Earth is flat and NASA's budget both increased, correlating at 0.9647. This is either the cruelest irony in the history of science funding or evidence that NASA needs to spend its money differently. One agency's entire purpose is to photograph the Earth from space—a sphere, clearly—while a growing percentage of the population looks at those photographs and says 'no.' The correlation implies that every additional billion dollars NASA receives produces a proportional increase in flat Earth belief, which is the kind of return on investment that would concern any auditor.

Flat Earth belief grew from roughly 2% to around 10% of Americans between 2011 and 2022, driven by YouTube algorithm amplification, social media conspiracy communities, and the broader epistemological fragmentation of the internet era. NASA's budget grew from approximately $18 billion to $26 billion, driven by bipartisan support for space exploration, Artemis program funding, and climate science appropriations. Both trends reflect independent aspects of the same era: one the growth of misinformation, the other the growth of science funding.

A society can simultaneously invest more in science and produce more people who reject it. The correlation captures one of the defining paradoxes of the internet age: information and misinformation grow together, and funding cannot overcome algorithm-driven belief.