In my mind, there's a distinction here that is probably worth making explicit:

Many scientists think (or act as if they think) that infusing the public with a greater level of scientific knowledge will lead to positive changes in policy and attitudes in a near-term context.  That is pretty much demonstrably not true, which is one of the points that this article is making.

Many scientists also think (correctly) that the level of general science education and understanding among the public is miserable, and that this is a serious impediment to being able to make informed decisions about policy that relates to scientific issues.  In this, they are quite correct.

The distinction here is that educating the public (and most particularly youth) about science is a useful activity in terms of its long term payoff, but not in terms of its short-term policy effects.  Also, long-term efforts to improve scientific literacy can, and should, focus on a variety of subjects covering a whole range of fields.  Efforts by scientists to influence short-term policy, on the other hand, are necessarily focused on those specific fields relevant to the policy in question.

Maybe I'm berating the obvious here.  But from the way the article is written, it almost sounds like you're saying that science education/information is a waste of time.  Obviously, it's not.  It's just a long-term investment (and one which, had it been taken more seriously in the last 30 years, might have prevented the need for "emergency measures" to focus people of climate change now).

I guess the way I'd phrase the distinction is between scientific knowledge (say, specific facts and theories in a specific area) and knowledge about science, i.e., about how science works, what the scientific method(s) do(es), the notions of testability and replicability and falsifiability and fallibility, etc.

On the former, while I certainly would like to see basic scientific literacy improved, I think some science types have rather unrealistic dreams of every citizen knowing how photosynthesis works, and Newton's four laws, and how speciation develops, and etc. The fact is that most people, for the imaginable future, are not going to know that stuff, no matter what you do. People have a whole range of demands on their attention, mainly work and family and such, and just won't have much time or room for knowledge that doesn't bear on their practical concerns.

What I think is achievable is a certain basic level of empirical literacy -- i.e., a basic understanding of how empirical knowledge-gathering works, what does and doesn't count as scientific evidence, what exactly scientific "consensus" means, etc. etc.

It's scientific habits of mind I'd like to see more widespread, rather than, say, increased ability to recite scientific facts. After all, most people will never be able to independently verify whether, say, the antarctic ice is melting. But a citizenry that understands science a little better will understand better where to look for that information and who to trust about it.

That make any sense?

www.grist.org

It's not like you need to have facts on your side to win an argument.

Look at how well Tobacco has done.

_

Oddly thats why I'd say "The Great Global Warming Swindle" was so effective (despite being scientifically bankrupt)

You just need to present it in a way which is "easy to digest" for the public.

You need to translate it into laymens terms.

What was Newton's 4th law?

Isn't this what education should be more about, in general? Providing the intellectual skills necessary to navigate in a complex world. Learning how to think, rather than simply memorizing "facts" or learning a trade?

For every action there are several knee-jerk reactions?

I agree with the main post - I think its good advice for the citizen-scientist.

But don't you think its easier to explain photosynthesis than statistical inference? Everyone has seen a plant turn brown and die. But even Einstein didn't want to believe that god was rolling the dice.

I guess what I'm saying is that the stats underlying empirical science are completely abstract. You can give examples, but they are theoretical math models... they have no tangible counterparts. And maybe even more upsetting, probability based stats have philosophical resonances about
our ability to have certain knowledge about reality,
our own uniqueness and even
our free will.
That is probably pretty scary for a lot of folks.

I'm not saying that empirical methods can't be taught in high school - just wouldn't underestimate it as a task.

and David's follow up comment.

It's more important to let the public know how science works. Tell people that science is based on physical facts that can be objectively shown and tries to remove the personal subjective interpretations. Its not that science does this perfectly, but that is different than most other area like politics, law and business.

Other things are about the day-to-day life of scientists. They are not saying people are warming the planet to get money. One of the scientist at realclimate worked on the IPCC reports and said he spend many hours on it outside is regular job for no money. Another is how dishonesty is treated in science. Making things up the way jabailo does is completely unacceptable in the scientific community.

I think I agree with parts of this posts but disagree on others.

The public does needs more facts, at least as long as the deniers spout their nonsense in the public. When someone in a casual discussion says AGW must be false because he read in a Newsweek article by a professor from MIT that 95% of the greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor (you can insert any other canard here, there are tons of them), then people need to know an answer to it. But it needs to be simple enough for laymen to understand, and exactly that is missing in the media. Sure, you can read realclimate and read that it is not just a matter of percentages, but that is over the head of most people not familiar with the matter. It needs to be much easier to digest. And a scientist with authority will have a much larger effect than a hobby blogger like me.