That's probably true for some parts of science, but I think the general public pays at least as much attention to science as to art, when something catches its attention. How many people who don't know the first thing about particle physics were tweeting about the Higgs Boson? Probably more than the number who tweet about Damien Hirst! Astronomers are good at getting public attention and cultivating a sense of "astronomy appreciation" among laypeople as well.
I think that's worrying - people don't have the language to begin to understand the Higgs boson.
Not just that they don't know what a boson is, but they don't really know what particles are, or what energy is, or what mass is. And so when you need to explain what the Higgs Boson is you need to give the simple lies we tell people when we explain physics
I live in the UK. BBC Radio 4 has a "flagship" news and current affairs programme called 'Today'.[1] Science is routinely handled as if the audience are idiots, while arts are given free range to be reasonably esoteric.
Sure. But we’re not all Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye, and we don’t all work in fields that make it to “pop science” status. My work is in compilers—not exactly well known outside academia and the programming community. It doesn’t come for free.
