It's Full of Stars

jtotheizzoe:

Disturbing highlights:

“• Only 18 percent know a scientist personally. For most, the first thing that probably comes to mind when they think “scientist” is a Hollywood stereotype—or the local TV weatherman.

• 44 percent cannot even name a scientific role model. And among those that do give a name, their top three choices—Bill Gates, Al Gore, and Albert Einstein—are either not scientists, or not alive.

• Information about science is vanishing from the national news media. According to 2008 figures from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, if you watch 5 hours of cable news, you can expect to see about a minute devoted to science and technology coverage. And no wonder: Only 13 percent of Americans now say they follow science and technology news “very closely,” and that number has been dropping in recent years. The media is giving the people what they want.

• Perhaps most disturbing: Far fewer Americans today describe scientific innovations as among the country’s top achievements—27 percent in 2009 versus 47 percent a decade earlier. The same goes for space exploration and the moon landing—far fewer rank it as our greatest overall achievement.”

And some hope:

“We need to mobilize American kids to want to be scientists; and American adults to see how science—and the policies tied to it—affect to their lives and our future. Science has to stop being something those strange other people do; it has to be something we all live and breathe.”

There’s an awesome project mentioned in this article called Rock Stars of Science.  I have an idea and I might need your help … more to come later on that.

(Source: jtotheizzoe)