As a footnote to my recent piece on taking responsibility for scientific literacy, check out this piece in which Jeremy Smith fisks Brooks in the NYT:
In his Feb. 17 New York Times column, “Human Nature Redux,†David Brooks argues that belief in human goodness is nearly extinct–and that science is responsible.
As Smith demonstrates, Brooks gets most of the science (and much of the history) dead wrong. Embarrassingly, painfully wrong. And this is stuff about which some of the best science writers have produced extremely accessible material. Pompous op-ed writers for the WaPo and NYT should stop blaming scientists and consider their own responsibilities….