One in every 10 Americans thinks "HTML" is a disease transmitted through sex, according to the findings of a poll conducted by VoucherCloud.
VoucherCloud is a coupon providing website that conducted a poll to see how much their customers knew about technology and technological terms. A survey of 2,392 American men and women, all of whom were 18 years of age or older, revealed some interesting insights.
The most shocking one was that one in 10 Americans thought that Hyper Text Markup Language, better known as "HTML" was some sort of a disease that was transmitted through sex. This goes to say a lot about the state of both sex and computer education in the United States.
The study also reported that 15 percent said "software" was a comfortable type of clothing and 12 percent said 'USB' was the acronym for a European country. A whopping 77 percent of Americans in the survey were not able to define what SEO meant. SEO stands for "Search-Engine Optimisation". The study said 27 percent of the respondents said "gigabyte" was a South American insect, according to Los Angeles Times.
Additionally, 23 percent of Americans thought an MP3, which is an audio file, was a "Star Wars" robot and 43 percent said they believed a "motherboard" was "the deck of a cruise ship."
After publishing findings of the study, Los Angeles Times came under the wrath of a journalism ethic website named "iMediaEthics." The website reprimanded Los Angeles Times for not providing a link to the study and questioned the "origin" and "veracity" of the study. iMediaEthics went on to talk about how false studies and fake results have become extremely common these days. The website also said the Los Angeles Times reporter who did the story told iMediaEthics that he didn't actually see the survey that served as the basis of his article.
Los Angeles Times then went on to post a clarification on the raised doubts. It said that 10 Yetis Public Relations, the firm that handles VoucherCloud's press releases had handed over details of the full survey to prove the authenticity of the study.
TIME also reached out to the PR website, who confirmed that the findings were real.
"It's a completely real study and survey that we sent out to a large database. I've read the claims I know exactly what you're talking about, but it is a real tried and tested method. We're quite well known in the U.K. for doing these. It's 100% genuine and what we do is 100% valid," the website replied toTIME.
