A recent survey showed that only 17% of the public believes that the U.S. is the best in the world in scientific achievement. On the flip, a full 84% believe that science’s effect on society has been mostly positive. This would seem to indicate that on a whole we think science is important, we like what it does for us, we just don’t think we’re very good at it. Curious.

I’m also not sure how to reconcile this information with repeated studies that show that around 45% of the population believe the world is less than 10,000 years old. This literal creationist view is pretty science hostile any way you look at it. As I’ve opined extensively before, you can’t really accept the validity of the scientific method and cling to the notion that dinosaurs had stalls on the Ark.

That suggests that people like their science and technology enriched lives, as long as they don’t have to be bothered with the niggling details. But I think the failing here is that simply being a nation of consumers is not economically sustainable. In order to afford those technical trinkets, we need to add value of some sort to the world. And if it’s not technology, then I’m unsure what it will be. It’s pretty clear we can’t compete on labor. We tried being the world’s financial center, but that’s pretty well played out in recent times. What’s left? Can we sustain the population’s standard of living by making Reality TV shows? I doubt it.

Maybe it’s time to embrace science. Maybe it’s time to push our children into science related fields. Maybe it’s time to encourage our kids to get technical graduate degrees.

It was perhaps telling that on a recent college orientation trip to Clarkson University with my son, that Kim observed that the names on the professors’ offices as we strolled the hall were almost all foreign surnames. Parents in other countries are pushing their kids to attend our schools, which does suggest that maybe we still have a scientific power base to leverage. Apparently a base that we ourselves are not willing to leverage.

There’s still time, but the window is closing…