Scientists or celebrities?

In January 2009 more than 2,000 British adults were asked, which one of the following groups of people do you think typically has the most influence on our daily lives? And their answers were:

Scientists 3%
Politicians 40%
Financiers 29%
Sportspeople 1%
Celebrities 7%
None of these 13%
Don't know 8%

So more people thought celebrities were more important than scientists. The relatively new UK science minister, Lord Drayson, added that, "there is still the perception among many of our people that science is too clever for them or elitist in some way."

So, in order to reach out to these misinformed masses, the government has seen fit to create a website with the catchy slogan, Science: So what? So everything. Oh, how I love these crazy government public education websites. This one is even better than the recent Science and Society site. It starts out with the frank statement, "In the UK, we don’t value science as much as we should." Yes, that's true.

But it doesn't stop there. In order to hammer home how fun and exciting science can be, there's a video of a bloke (who sounds like a Blue Peter presenter after a night out) building an electric motor. On another page, we're enlightened with the revelation that football players can nowadays avoid the need for annoying glasses thanks to advances in laser eye surgery. Really? Wow.

Those fools who chose celebrities over scientists must really regret their decision now...

The above picture is from this page of the government's website.