Denialism

Vaccine-autism claims, "Frankenfood" bans, the herbal cure craze: All point to the public's growing fear (and, often, outright denial) of science and reason, says Michael Specter. He warns the trend spells disaster for human progress.

Another of the TED talks. This one raises interesting point about scientific literacy. The time machine question in the first few moments is really rather intriguing. I'd like to see the results from a large sample of people especially if the answers were broken down by age and sex. Actually I'd like to see them broken down by political affiliation too. Oh, and maybe by religious beliefs.