Most of what you say may be true, with one exception: “Tiny minority”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
is precisely the problem.
Why is there a stereotype of “White girls in their 20s who talk about the Universe providing guidance?” Simple:
*BECAUSE THERE ARE lots of ‘white girls in their 20s who talk about the Universe providing guidance”: The stereotype didn’t come from nothing.
The trend I’ve noticed since Sagan’s day has been a strong shift into polarizing within the politics of Science.
There is a lot of the same people patting each other on the back on how much better they are than the “them”.
But ‘the ‘them'” isn’t the minority. Rather than reaching out to the general public, which INCLUDES ‘the them’, Science educators have, in greater and greater amounts, “preach to the already converted” and they feel their numbers are massive due to consistency of opinion amongst members.
But the Westboro Baptist Church appears huge and it’s just a few people, and THEY’RE downright delusional. Yet people who argue against them don’t see the smallness of their number but instead see the bigness of the impression they leave.
Confirmation bias. None, even Bill Nye, is immune from it, nor am I. Maybe you’ve escaped its clutches, in which case, please write a book and teach a few people.
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