The heavily referenced symbols in this traditional paradigm are popular science outlets such as Scientific American or PBS' Nova along with famous popularizers such as Richard Feynman and Carl Sagan. Often when the relationship between science and society breaks down, science illiteracy is typically blamed, the absence of quality science coverage is bemoaned, and there is a call put out for "the next Carl Sagan."

Deficit model thinking also includes a fall from grace narrative, with various mythmakers hyperbolizing that in contrast to today's culture of "anti-science," there was a point in the past when the public understood--and as a direct consequence--deeply respected science. In the United States, this so-called golden era is often described as the dozen or so years of the "Space Race," the period that stretched from the 1957 Russian launch of the Sputnik satellite to the U.S. lunar landing in 1969.

In addition, no matter how accurately communicated and understood the science, policy decisions cannot be separated from values, political context, and necessary trade-offs between costs, benefits, and risks (Jasanoff, 2005; Guston et al., 2009; Pielke, 2007). [My bold.]

But if the Internet has made it easier for pockets of antiscience feeling to grow and flourish, scientific authorities also deserve some of the blame. “I don't think they woke up that this was a serious problem until maybe 2008,” David Gorski says about the growing antivaccine sentiment. George Washington University's Hotez notes that “the office of the surgeon general, the secretary of Health and Human Services, and the head of the CDC have not been very vocal on this issue.” True, the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, and other governmental organizations feature accurate and up-to-date information about vaccine risks on their Web sites. But that is very different from launching a concerted communications campaign to ensure that the public retains faith in vaccination.

Some outspoken scientists may have actually increased the polarization on this issue. For example, calling those against vaccines “scientifically illiterate”—or, as CDC vaccine expert Stephen Cochi reportedly put it to one journalist, “junk scientists and charlatans”—may just lead to a further circling of the wagons.

The most promising approach to the vaccine-autism issue comes from the government itself. Consider the work

There is too much to address in one post, so I will do three. In the first I will adress what I take to be the broad themes of the book. In the second I will specifically address Chapter Eight, which addresses the “New Atheists” and is, regrettably, wall-to-wall nonsense. In the third I will pick up a few odds and ends, certain discordant notes in the book which, while not really central to the book's main arguments, were nonetheless quite annoying.

...

Short review: Mixed, but generally negative. Much of the book is very superficial and I don't think their proposed solutions are practical.

20090717 ??:?? — Key Steiger
     Making Science Cool Again

20090720 10:20 — Eric Berger
     Four decades after Apollo, how far have science and society split?

20090720 10:54 — M&K (at HuffPo)
     The American Science Deficit -- and What to do About it

20090720 11:00 — M&K
     40 Years After the Moon Landing: America's Science Deficit

20090721 06:47 — Jerry Coyne
     Chris Mooney on NSF funding

20090721 14:02 — Roger Peilke, Jr.
     A War on Science Policy?

20090721 15:00 — M&K
     Eric Berger on Unscientific America

20090721 16:15 — Greg Fish
     Blog wars: atheists, science writers and the war of words over scientific literacy

20090726 ??:?? — M&K (in the Boston Globe)

So I didn't get to ask them something snotty, like, "What did PZ Myers ever do to you?"

...I didn't care for the book and thought it had quite a few problems.