Dumber than you'll ever be

Megan McArdle Dana Gioia SEE RELATED:

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the following challenge

I’d ask [ordinary Americans] how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors, and composers they can name.\ \ I’d even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name.\ \ Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O’Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

Scientific illiteracy