Table 3.

Year 2 undergraduate medical students’ collective answers to the 10 questions in the area of their knowledge*

Question	Correct answer	Students’ collective answer–median	Students’ collective answer–mean
1. Valence electrons in carbon?	4	4	6
2. Number of cranial nerve pairs?	12	12	13
3. Number of bones in human body?	206	206	210
4. Freud’s “Interpretation of dreams” published?	1900	1901	1890
5. Number of human genes?	23 000	38 000†	1 124 128 437
6. Average GP’s salary in the UK?	104 100	76 001	85 568
7. Erythrocytes in 1 mL of blood?	5 000 000	8 679	12 124 582
8. Number of refugees in the world?	15 400 000	80 000 000	394 267 469
9. Number of people with diabetes?	347 000 000	100 000 000	444 785 232
10. Number of ATCGs in human genome?	3 000 000 000	23 500 327	178 090 845 668

*Number of responses N = 167.

†Question 5 was problematic because the number of human genes was revised down from about 40 000 to 23 000 only recently, ie, after the students learned of the former number; therefore, the median response from students was, in fact, very close to what they were likely to have learnt earlier in the course of their education).