Iain: There’s more to be said on that.

The problem with science is that it’s a gnosis — a body of esoteric material you need to spend years mastering. It is therefore inevitable that the people who do master it become a gnostic elite; and it follows from that that any public issue involving science can, and usually does, degenerate into an elite vs. masses squabble.

I don’t know any way out of that, but I do wish we could do a better job of showing people what a proper scientific attitude _is_, a thing which I think can be grasped by anyone, even without any specialized training in a particular science.

From that point of view, the heros of our age are the writers of pop-science books….