Re:Atomic Anxiety and the Tooth Fairy: Citizen Science in th...
by JadeNB on Wednesday July 11, 2018 @11:43AM
(#17507784)
> On a less sarcastic note, I wonder if the decline of trust in science in America has something to do with the current lack of a common enemy.
Perhaps more to do with its ubiquity. In the atomic age, one could see new advances attributed breathlessly to the ingenuity of scientists, and so was led, at least indirectly, to think of scientists as people who actively contributed to the good of society.
People nowadays are encouraged, roughly speaking, to think of their iPhones, say, as magic devices, not to think of the engineering and scientific wizardry that goes into their design. Why do we need scientists, if our lives are made so comfortable by devices that, for all we are encouraged to know, just work?
Perhaps more to do with its ubiquity. In the atomic age, one could see new advances attributed breathlessly to the ingenuity of scientists, and so was led, at least indirectly, to think of scientists as people who actively contributed to the good of society.
People nowadays are encouraged, roughly speaking, to think of their iPhones, say, as magic devices, not to think of the engineering and scientific wizardry that goes into their design. Why do we need scientists, if our lives are made so comfortable by devices that, for all we are encouraged to know, just work?