Rosling’s First Discovery

A medical doctor and professor of international health at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, Rosling became famous as a public educator who used statistics to show how the world is changing. He chose this public role after making two significant discoveries. Rosling's first discovery was that many people are not aware of even the most basic facts about global health and global development. Through surveys he conducted, Rosling found that at a time when poverty is falling faster than ever before, the majority of people think that the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty is rising. Similarly, he found that many underestimate global life expectancy, and are not aware of the success of delivering healthcare services, for example, vaccines globally. He found that people's worldviews often do not have much grounding in facts, even long before the "post-fact" era.