Innumerable Web sites are full of words and images with no hint of scientific evidence to back them up. These attacks on science come from both the political right and the political left. This contrast between genuine science and junk science is more than a supermarket check-out counter sideshow. A few years ago German Physics and Communist Biology were staples of dictatorial regimes. Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all able to use their particular brands of junk science as bases for genocidal slaughter.
Blind belief rules the millenial universe, dark and rangy as space itself.
Science teachers, it seems to me, are still our last best hope. But no one ever said it would be easy. Science teachers tend to stress the rote learning of names, facts and procedures, a technique guaranteed to leave little lasting effect upon most students beyond an acquired distaste for science. They stress broad coverage with little depth of understanding, a practice sure to leave most students with little awareness of the ideas that interest most scientists. Under these conditions there is little time to investigate the logic of scientific discovery, nor is there time for students to discuss how scientific logic might be applied to everyday life.