The latest miracle cure for cancer is given equal billing with Keanu Reave's latest publicist-approved squeeze and recipes that include dried soup. If the science guy pops up with something about why the Hubble Space Telescope is a good investment, that gets thrown in the hopper with the latest memorial plate featuring Elvis. Science claims to be a priveleged way of knowing. But when it is thrown into the vat with the lifestyles of television celebrities it loses its salience. Everything shouts equally loudly.
Nothing is right or wrong.
Sagan was a true modernist. But and who can blame him he also lapped up publicity like a dog. He appeared no less than 25 Times on Tonight in the 70s and 80s, and his PBS show Cosmos was that network's highest-rated show until Ken Burns' Civil War series dethroned it. While he calculated in The Dragons of Eden that it was probable that life existed elsewhere in the galaxy, he also stressed the uniqueness of life on Earth and crusaded against the environmental dangers of nuclear war. His bestselling books were read by laymen and scientists alike.