An impassioned polemic about the dangers of America's scientific illiteracy.

We live in a time of climatic change and energy crisis, of controversial biomedical research, of very real threats of global pandemics, nuclear proliferation, and tech-savvy terrorist attacks—all challenges that require scientific solutions.

And yet, as science writer Chris Mooney (The Republican War on Science, Storm World) and research scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum argue in Unscientific America, although science matters more than ever before to world affairs, to our economy, and to our very future, Americans are paying less and less attention to scientists. 

The disconnect between the scientific community and American culture grows wider every day. Consider:

• For every five hours of cable news, less than a minute is devoted to science
• 46 percent of Americans believe that God, not evolution, created life on earth
• The number of newspapers with science sections has shrunk from ninety-five to thirty-three since 1989

The blame lies everywhere: with lackluster public science education, the superficiality of today's profit-driven media, political partisanship, the general anti-intellectualism of American culture—but also with scientists themselves, whose increasingly narrow specialization has made it hard to connect outside the lab or the ivory tower.

Mooney and Kirshenbaum propose a broad array of initiatives that could reverse the current trend and lead to the greater integration of science into our national discourse—before it is too late.

Chris Mooney, coauthor of Unscientific America and author of Storm World and the New York Times bestseller The Republican War on Science, is a contributing editor to Science Progress. He writes for many publications, including Wired, Slate, and the American Prospect. With Sheril Kirshenbaum, he blogs at The Intersection. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Sheril Kirshenbaum, coauthor of Unscientific America, is a marine scientist and research associate at Duke University. She previously served as a congressional science fellow. With Chris Mooney, she blogs at The Intersection. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.