Status Updates From Unscientific America: How S...

(and notes...) "Science is godless in the same way plumbing is godless."

(and also notes) So... the false dichotomy between science and faith has been much promoted by the New Atheists.

(Also read the corresponding notes at the end of the book.) So... when this book was written, the best science news available on TV was on _The Daily Show_ and _The Colbert Report_.

Also read all the notes at the end of the book for these pages. I lived through the "Science Wars" in the 1990s and didn't quite realize it. I can look back now and see how hints of it got through to me.

So the problem isn't the public's lack of scientific knowledge, per se. There are lots of crazy people in the US with a fair amount of scientific knowledge and there are other countries where the public knowledge of science isn't much different than in the US but where science is respected as an important contributor to the public good.

This book was published in 2009. Obama is in his first year and the authors are optimistic about the future. Gone is the anti-science bias of the George Bush administration. Now we can fight global warning and embrace vaccines.