"Around 70% of the 11-15 year olds questioned said they did not picture scientists as 'normal young and attractive men and women'. (Um, I don't picture scientists as "normal" and [conventionally] attractive young men and women myself, and I'm a strong advocate of Science and scientists.) (However, I wouldn't include myself in the category 'normal young and attractive men and women', either... ) (This isn't Baywatch, people.)...

They found around 80% of pupils thought scientists did "very important work" and 70% thought they worked "creatively and imaginatively". Only 40% said they agreed that scientists did "boring and repetitive work".

Over three quarters of the respondents thought scientists were "really brainy people". ...

Among those who said they would not like to be scientists, reasons included: 'Because you would constantly be depressed and tired and not have time for family', and 'because they all wear big glasses and white coats and I am female' (Ow!! Ow!! Ow!!) (Math is hard.). ...

Dr Stylianadou said: '... Young people see science as important and exciting. But they don't see themselves doing it.' ...

The number taking A-level physics dropped by 34% between 1991 and 2004, with 28,698 taking the subject in that year.

The decline in numbers taking chemistry over the same period was 16%, with 44,440 students sitting the subject in 1991, and 37,254 in 2004.

The number of students taking maths (sic) also dropped by 22%."

"Jefferson County is said to be the fattest part of the fattest state in the United States after a 2002 study found it had the highest proportion (26.1%) of obese residents in Mississippi. ...

But this is not a message many people want to hear, according to Dr Frank McCune, the county's only obesity expert. ...

'Some deny the fact that obesity is a problem', he says. 'Many don't know what it is. Some of them think that being 5'4" (1.64m) tall and 225 pounds (102kg) is a normal weight.'

'They deny the fact that certain foods are not healthy, they deny the fact that there are choices. Exercise has been viewed with scepticism.' "

"It turns out that, after all, Americans were better off with no information than this flood of bad information in which you now float. The ignorant citizen was content in the knowledge that he was ignorant. Today's American, on the other hand, spends much of the day reading blatantly-biased ox droppings and then thinks he is well-read as a result.

The ignorant can be trusting and thus can be governed. The misinformed are impossible to govern because they cannot be talked out of the skewed rubbish they think they know.

... in the phenomenon of the Internet Message Board we have nothing less than a fundamental and momentous shift in human evolution. The diverse American races and social classes and idealogies are meeting each other on a personal basis, across land masses and at little expense, in a way not possible in the prior history of our planet.

And what we have found is that you hate each other.

... an important but fine distinction that Americans are no longer able to make (is that) between political disagreement and active personal animosity."

On making science interesting to students --

"I think one (way), perhaps, is to present science as it is, as something dazzling, as something tremendously exciting, as something eliciting feelings of reverence and awe, as something that our lives depend on.

... if spiffy jackets attractive to the opposite sex are given to students who do well in football, basketball, and baseball but none in chemistry, physics, and mathematics, if we do all of that, then it is not surprising that a lot of people come out of the American educational system turned off, or having never experienced, science."

Comments on “Wonder and Skepticism” above --

"Here we are, a mere ten years later in a radically different cultural atmosphere. Now, we seem to be engaged in a great turning away from reality. The engine of science continues to churn out discoveries at an astonishing rate, and yet our culture seems to have lost the ability to translate these insights into a grander perspective. It’s as if our first forays into the immensity of the universe have sent us flying into a panic. The dawning reality of our tiny portion of space and time has been too much for us to bear. We turn away, seeking refuge in the discredited myths of our centrality."

(And interestingly enough, the United States seems to be particularly desperate to preserve a mythos of its own centrality. If this observation is true, I have no idea why it should be so.)

In the past month, the interim president of Cornell University and the dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine have both spoken on this theme, warning in dramatic terms of the long-term consequences.

'Among the most significant forces is the rising tide of anti-science sentiment that seems to have its nucleus in Washington but which extends throughout the nation', said Stanford's Philip Pizzo in a letter posted on the school Web site on October 3. ...

'When we ask people what they know about science, just under 20 percent turn out to be scientifically literate', said Jon Miller, director of the center for biomedical communication at Northwestern University.

He said science and especially mathematics were poorly taught in most U.S. schools, leading both to a shortage of good scientists and general scientific ignorance. ...

Scientists bemoan the lack of qualified U.S. candidates for postgraduate and doctoral studies at American universities and currently fill around a third of available science and engineering slots with foreign students."

"There is an insidious and growing problem," said Professor (Steve) Jones, of University College London. "It's a step back from rationality. They (the creationists) don't have a problem with science, they have a problem with argument. And irrationality is a very infectious disease as we see from the United States."