This problem has been growing for decades. Colleges crank out graduates with degrees in "international relations" and French literature while the medical quacks (like Oz) and pseudoscience hucksters (like the foodies) rule public opinion with lies and false promises on the Internet.
It has now reached the point where most of our leaders--including the chairs of the so-called "science" committees in Congress and most of the administration--are scientific illiterates. Almost all of them are lawyers and even the few doctors (like the senator from Oklahoma) are not scientists but political axe-grinders, subjecting objectivity to ideological litmus testing.
We have never been as dependent on science as we are now. All we can do is to keep crying in the wilderness until maybe, probably late but hopefully not TOO late, educators and real leaders take notice.
Unless they do our civilization is literally doomed. Even now we lag decades behind the rest of the world in real science; the only reason we are not even further in the hole is money--we bribe the brain power from places where it would be invaluable in creating real human progress to come here to create new video games and lousy food items. As in "foreign relations", we behave as bullies and bigots, trampling all before our insatiable greed.
