Compare the media's coverage of celebrities and sex scandals, fun, food and fashion with coverage of science issues. 'Nuff said?

It reflexes the education of people as a whole but also the cult they practice; Christian's dogmas has always rejected the free thinking for obvious reasons, their tales, legends and so on portray the Physical Reality as a subordinate reality being the metaphysical reality the truly reality, two views of the reality can't exit together; religion has developed a body of information that have little or nothing to do with the Physical Reality and that is core to what it teaches while Science teaches what can be perceived by our senses, whether naked or aided by instruments, and proved that really exists in the Physical Reality.

I don't think that while religion keeps such a grip on people beliefs there will be a clear, cheered, deep and large understanding of the model of the Physical Reality that Science builds. Today Science has developed a solid knowledge of the Solar System and beyond but most people can't grab it and less to believe that what religion tells them doesn't match the Physical Reality. And worse, still some scientists are looking hard for ways to confirm the tales of the Bible. That is outrageous from a scientific point of view.

The RCC insists in that salvation comes from faith not from reason and for one good reason, there is not irrefutable proof that God exists, so far the best of it is Plato's "it is a necessary being" as answer to the question "who created God? But such an answer lacks universal logic, to believe it one need to believe first, a priory, in God, so isn't proof at all.

Two scientific expeditions to the Artic Ocean last summer found massive amounts of methane bubbling up off of a Norwegian island and Siberian Russia. Methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. A runaway methane release could cause a extinction event like that of the Permian Extinction which was far worse than the one that killed the dinosaurs. During the Permian Extinction Sulfur gas producing bacteria covered most of the ocean killing most of the ocean and creating poisonous sulfur gas in the atmosphere killing off most animal life on land. Already this sulfur gas producing bacteria has spread off of SW Africa Namibia and has grown from 100 kilometers to almost 1000 kilometer dead zone. Greenhouse warming will be far worse than the scientists predict because the true extent of the methane release has not been factored into the computer models. UT Austin Anthropologists say that the hype over the Mayan end of the calendar in 2012 cataclysm is incorrect, that the real time of change is 2102. The Mayan texts shows a cataclysmic flood of water from the mountains. If warming far exceeds predictions super size lakes of water could form in Antarctica and Greenland and the ice dams break causing a world wide flood, 50 ft.+ plus waves. There are mountains under the ice in Greenland and Antarctica. That would disprove Biblical Genesis statement that Big Daddy promises no world wide flood again.

I think people tend to confuse science with technology. Most of the technological advances may have been made possible by science, but science is really about finding out how the world works. After experiencing some phenomenon, a scientific attitude is to try to come up with a hypothesis of why it happens, and then look for facts that support the idea. If the facts support the hypothesis, there is a good chance that it is the truth. But it is still tentative--something might prove it wrong. That is the beauty of science--it is always subject to revision.

That's FOX

You can't expect people who are some 80% superstitious to take science and technology seriously - and that's the sad reality in the US. I was gob-smacked when I found out about this - here I thought it was just a couple nut-cases like Jim Jones and David Koresh - but it is the bulk of the US population that we're talking about here - and there is no cure for idiocy.

C O R N E L I A _ D E A N,

You disingenuously wrap evolutionary truth layers with supposedly equally valid commingled "consensus" of human caused Global "warming", with you say :

"And while almost all of the scientists surveyed accept that human beings evolved by natural processes and that human activity, chiefly the burning of fossil fuels, is causing global warming, general public is far less sure."

The reality is that government ( corporately controlled ) scientific research funding and information disbursement ( and slanting bias ) is propagating a new BIG LIE for profiteerism and population control.

The reality is that really independent and open minded thinkers and informed scientists are what you claim are those that are NOT " a l m o s t _ a l l ".

As a scientist, I can assure you that the apparent "global warming" consensus is a ( corporate ) governmentally sanctioned and contrived situation along with equally vile duplicity in the energy ( and Gollum Sacks bankster ) corporations acting like they _m.u.s.t_ pay shills to fight against it ( they openly fight it with counter PSYOPS media propaganda -- to make it appear to be propaganda = lies ) -- even though they don't believe it for a second.

There are millions of qualified scientists and informed rational thinkers ( completely _n.o.t_ in the pay of eXXon … ) who you would apparently label and call as "deniers" -- as is if that were "proven" by what you hear about in the $ewer Main $tream Media ?

Krugman among others is either deluded, or enough aware -- that his continued survival and existence within the machinery of capitalism requires such unmitigated beliefs.

Why you might better ask,

___ do the corporations & banksters _l.i.k.e_ this ? ? ? ?

N.

P . S . You continue the disservice of science manipulating public understanding, when clearly you observe the outright inconsistency of popular thought and apparent consensus.

Real scientists and thinkers would never bait and switch the public's attention from what they truly believe ( to be true, and is true ) to what the powerful corporations WANT THEM TO BELIEVE ( which is a self serving lie ).

Corporate misinformation, religious misgivings, and outdated machismo prevent just about any average American from having a clear picture on the scientific advances of the past century. But especially corporate misinformation. It's startling that they barely even mention that piece of the puzzle in this article.

The scientists are talking, and the people are paying attention. But for every bonafide scientific opinion they hear, they hear 3 times as much utter nonsense from know-nothing pundits paid off by big business and big religion. Just watch CNN sometime, it's astounding.

'Only 3 percent of the scientists said they "often" spoke to reporters.'

This is specious reporting, and an extremely disappointing article.

Almost all US Govt. funded scientific research funding comes with a caveat; that there MUST be a education and outreach (E&O) component provided by the funding. NSF, the National Labs, NHS, ad nauseaum, have all developed significant E&O departments within their organizations and the organizations (mostly Universities) that receive the funding. This has also the wonderful effect of allowing scientists to do what they do best; science. Scientists are notoriously poor at speaking with the media, more out of concern for being misquoted or quoted out of context which is endemic in media reporting. E&O departments do get the message out, but alas, the media fails to pick up on this work.

Misinformation is a scientist's worst nightmare, and unfortunately, special-interest groups and the media revel in misinforming the public.

"You are either with us, or you are against us."

"You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists."

"You are either with us, or you are with the scientists."

Here's my guess as to why sciences aren't taught early and thoroughly...a small amount of learning quickly brings one to understand the truly intimate connection between one's own body and the living world within which we exist...critical thinking, in general, also leads to awkward questions regarding religion, justice, education, property ownership, individual rights and responsibilities, etc...back to the connection between the planet and your very body: this knowledge, once fully internalized and understood, would cause great pause, and rightful questioning, regarding the destruction of that world, and the purposes for which we do so...the moral and ethical aspects to existence are much more difficult to avoid when a potential consumer actually cares about how a product was created...which exact piece of land in exactly which country was blown to shit and poisoned to create my already-broken CD player? What people live there, and do they know about it, and how do they feel about it? Where is this piece of shit going to go now? How did we create the electricity upon which my already-broken CD player ran, and my new, even-cheaper and shorter-lived-to-be, replacement CD player will run? Why can't we live without this shit and leave the living world in working order?

This kind of thinking is problematic from a sales standpoint, a profit standpoint, and must be eliminated...so: enjoy your homes, and faucets and toilets, and clothes, and cars, and stores, and tvs...there is no planet...just things we can use to build better lives: glorious mines, and wonderful dams, and blessed nuke plants, and holy high voltage lines, and clever-cool chemical reactions, and magnificent mini-processors, and GPS around the globe, and now-tiny trees to cut down, and trickling rivers and acidifying oceans to drain and poison, and other super-scrumptious species of plant and animal to eat or relocate to oblivion...we don't need them, we're HUMANS! Even better, we're AMERICANS! We're the shit...if we say there's no global warming, then, dammit, there isn't!

Next!

The dumbing down of America was purely intentional, and huge sums of money are being spent to maintain it. Take a look at what it has accomplished in the last 30 years, when public education first began to take hits from tax reformers:

>$11 trillion in debt even BEFORE the economy derailed last fall, and most of that run up by people who STILL call themselves 'fiscal conservatives'.
>Casino capitalism run amok on WallStreet, and when it bankrupts the country, guess who's at the head of the trough for a handout? You can't make this stuff up!
>One out of every three healthcare dollars in America is spent on people who literally KILL other people for it. And we can't have the healthcare of Canada, Britain, France, etc because that would be 'socialism', and look what it did to them!
>$600 billion a year to a military machine that obviously isn't defending the interests of Americans (who aren't part-owners of Exxon).
>The entire Bush presidency. After eight years of which almost HALF the population thinks Sarah Palin would be a great candidate for V.P.
>Half the country doesn't believe in Global Warming, so 'drill baby drill'! Music to an oil-man's ears.
>The idea that Obama is a liberal, or represents a liberal viewpoint.

With so much 'good' coming out of the destruction of the American brain, why would these people stop? 'Divide and conquer': as old as the Romans.

I agree that the scientific and technical illiteracy of USAns is a big problem. It largely seems to derive from a complete lack of interest and the complete extinction, since the 1960's of the "sense-of-wonder" in the natural and/or technological world that drives scientific interest.

When I bought and upgraded a couple electric motor scooters, I added decals saying "electric" and "LiFePO4" (the new, cutting-edge battery chemistry I upgraded them to) But apparently, USAns cannot even read a simple chemical formula these days, because upon inquiring a few times, no one understood it.

As far as scientists who engage the public, there was a word for such scientists in the 1960 and 1970's. They were called teachers - particularly high-school earth science, biology, chemistry and physics teachers. What the hell are kids being taught these days?

It is a shame that scientists now have to become public activists. I'd like to live in a society that listens to its experts eagerly and without encouragement. But the truth is that until more scientists start speaking up against the rampant ignorance prevalent is so much of our society, of which global warming and evolution are just two aspects, we will be hard pressed to bring about the consciousness we need.

"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the shadow"