Maybe I can try to clarify one or two things, while I’m at it. I have an interest in any ideas that could help improve actual scientific literacy, as that happens to be something I teach. It goes without saying, then, that I’d be delighted if UA contained such ideas and that I’d actually buy and read the book. In order to assess the likelihood of that, though, I’ll naturally have to rely on reviews and (in this case) whatever texts the authors write about their book. I can only tentatively assume from that that what is contained in UA is neither new nor particularly imaginativeâ??at least that seems to be the consensus in the reviews, and M&K have added not a single thing to countervail that impression.

But what is worse, from where I’m standing, is that in the whole debate M&K have consistently displayed a rather surprising ignorance of central aspects of any meaningful definition of ‘scientific literacy’â??and indeed science’s philosophical basis. To being with, they seem to have no meaningful definition of ‘scientific literacy’; any requests to clarify what exactly they mean by that were deflected with the usual ‘Buy our book’. (See also their latest post, where they speak of “the acceptance of evolutionary science”, as if a mere nodding approval of evolution entailed actual scientific literacy.)

Second, they seem not to notice that some of their claims, e.g. that the Really Quite Old Atheists’ tactics are counterproductive, would need some actual data to support them; they either ignored this complaint or, in the Pew case, cited material that flatly contradicted their claims.

Third, with respect to reviews of UA, M&K took great pains not to mention the critical aspects of the great majority of reviews, in a few cases quoting just two or three sentences that were vaguely positive out of a dozen paragraphs that made substantial criticisms which also were almost identical to those by PZ and Jerry. In the context of science, this is blatantly in breach of any good ethical conduct that we should want the public to be literate about.

I agree that we need programs to train scientists in the art of communicating to the public.

the organization Poptech is doing just that.

See:

http://www.poptech.org/science_and_public_leadership_fellows_release

One point in your list of the obvious enemy (Republicans, Morons and Megalomaniacs) , you left out the leftwing antiscience crowd.

Steve was all over the place with his interest in and support of Marxism. He was definitely a very strong supporter of it – if not strictly speaking an avowed one – when he and Lewontin critiqued “Sociobiology” (and E. O. Wilson) as members of the radical leftist – and Marxist-oriented – Science for the People.

There’s this interesting obituary that appeared in this socialist publication which may be worth noting:

http://socialistworker.org/2002-1/410/410_08_StephenJayGould.shtml

(I might add that the writer provides more evidence supporting my contention that, as a public figure, Steve was far more important than Carl Sagan ever was.).