Why has the public view on scientists changed in recent years?

[Huckleberry]

Scientists aren't getting the fanfare that they had before. In the last 20 years things have gotten smaller and faster and generally more efficient, but there hasn't been anything introduced into society that alters peoples live dramatically. If there has been then the individual scientist isn't getting credit for it. This is the century of business and media. Science takes a back seat in public opinion.

 

[EnumaElish]

Scientists aren't getting the fanfare that they had before. In the last 20 years things have gotten smaller and faster and generally more efficient, but there hasn't been anything introduced into society that alters peoples live dramatically. If there has been then the individual scientist isn't getting credit for it. This is the century of business and media. Science takes a back seat in public opinion.

Was Einstein the last artisan? "Struggling young scientist"? Perhaps science has become more of a commodity since him?

 

[Huckleberry]

Was Einstein the last artisan? "Struggling young scientist"? Perhaps science has become more of a commodity since him?

I'm sure there are Einsteins in the world today somewhere. I just don't see them on tv or in the local news. Out of sight, out of mind. I think the average person just doesn't read science magazines or journals and forums. Maybe we have become technologically saturated and aren't expecting anything really new and life-changing to come along any time soon. A struggling young scientist may not have the same opportunites. I really don't know.

What effect have corporations had on science in the last 20 years?

 

[wildman]

As an outsider looking in (an engineer, not scientist), it appears that the most basic of the sciences (physics) is in disarray. String Theory seems to be a symptom of this disarray and then it is defended as the "only game in town". What kind of defense is that? Even QM doesn't seem to me to make sense. Yes its formula are powerful, but it does take on a feature of mystery and seeming magic when it talks about things like particles going through two slits at the same time (but only when you aren't looking!).

I think the public is responding to that disarray. People are thinking: "Well if you guys don't know what is going on, how can we trust you?"

 

[Huckleberry]

I think if you were to ask the average Joe on the street to describe the double-slit experiment he would look at you cross-eyed, having no idea what that is.

Science and engineering exist to give us toys and make life easier and longer. It's only interesting if it is practical to the public. If it can make a washing machine spin or a telephone ring; if it cleans pots and pans and can cook a ham; if it shows us the news or sings the blues, then it is important to the average person.

Even that isn't enough. As far as I know my computer was invented by Sony and owned by Bill Gates, cause he's rich. I don't feel a pressing interest to know how the forces interact in the beams that support the roof over my head and who might have created the math that keeps me from crawling out of a pile of rubble. I never think about the industrial process that creates the fibers in my carpet and puts it all together. I only care that it keeps my feet warm and is softer than concrete. I think that charcoal stuff they use to pump people's stomachs is pretty gross. I also believe that Roy G. Biv invented the rainbow, because that's what my first grade teacher told me years ago. And second hand smoke is really worse than first hand, cause I heard that somewhere too.

Who needs Albert Einstein in the papers when you have Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future on tv? Give us some groundbreaking new toy to play with like a flux capacitor and you will have the attention of the entire world. Make something like Quantum Mechanics practical and engineer it into something functional and you will be insanely famous and rich. Give us teleporters and holodecks and all that fancy Star Trek stuff and you will keep our attention and admiration for exactly one generation. Cause I'm bored with the toys I have now and you all need to do your science stuff and make the world a better place for me to live in.

 

[CleffedUp]

I don't think anyone has mentioned what is probably the single most dramatic and controversial invention in the history of man: The atomic bomb.

Do a search in Google (+"atomic bomb" +einstein) and you get some 300k hits, even though he had nothing directly to do with it. I don't have the time to do the chronology here, but having your name associated with a device that ended "The War" in the fashion it did would logically stand to get you a lot of attention.

 

[Astronuc]

I heard a journalist just yesterday talk about the scientists who use Einstein's relativity to create nuclear weapons, and if the general population can even make the connection, that's what they will believe.

 

[D H]

As an outsider looking in (an engineer, not scientist), it appears that the most basic of the sciences (physics) is in disarray. String Theory seems to be a symptom of this disarray and then it is defended as the "only game in town". What kind of defense is that? Even QM doesn't seem to me to make sense. Yes its formula are powerful, but it does take on a feature of mystery and seeming magic when it talks about things like particles going through two slits at the same time (but only when you aren't looking!).

I think the public is responding to that disarray. People are thinking: "Well if you guys don't know what is going on, how can we trust you?"

Just because QM "doesn't seem to me to make sense" doesn't mean it is disarray. The standard model of physics describes observations extremely well. It might be weird, but disarray? No. We plucked most of the easy fruit off the physics treeby the mid-to-late 1800s. The same goes for most other sciences. Since then scientists have been attacking domains far removed from our everyday world, giving us half-dead cats that morphed from slime. Just because you (speaking generically) don't understand quantum mechanics or plate tectonics or evolution or whatever doesn't mean scientists don't understand and agree on these topics.

Modern science is far removed from the everyday world. Human reaction time is about half a second. Physicists look at time spans as small as a picosecond. Human lifetime is less than a hundred years. Astronomers, geologists, and biologists look at time spans that make those hundred years look infinitesimally small. Physicists have some disagreements regarding what happens during their incredibly small time spans. Biologists have some disagreement what happens during their incredibly long time spans. That does not mean disarray. It just means they don't have all of the details worked out.

An extremely small minority of scientists don't agree with the modern views. The modern media is won't to find the two quacks out of one thousand scientists who disagree with modern physics / modern geology / modern biology. This creates a perception of disarray when in fact none exists. Quacks have been around as long as humanity has. Until recently, we knew what to do with them: Ignore them.

Another problem is that we (speaking generally again) have come to expect problems to be resolved instantly. Science doesn't work that way. Science is slow. Nearly a century passed between the discovery of X-rays and the completion of the standard model. Similar time spans occur in other sciences. Just because we don't know the hairiest of details of how the universe works doesn't mean we don't know anything. This is not disarray; it is how science works.