Yes, and you framed this problem very well, I think, in your dialogue with Fox when you wrote, "Scientists and engineers are notoriously bad at politics and public relations, with certain exceptions who become famous because of their exceptional status."

I've worked with engineers over the years, so I know there is at least some truth to your observations, although I hasten to note that the Land of Generalizations is built on shakey turf.

Nevertheless, I think it may be profitable to pose the question: are scientists and engineers poor communicators because of too much technical and not enough liberal study, or are they just genetically disposed to such shortcomings due to the same unique factors which prompted them to become scientists and engineers in the first place?

Genetics or environment?

If genes are the dominant factor, and research into twins raised separately seems to show that they may be, then the sparse liberal study most of these people undertake can only make these natural shortcomings even worse.

It's obvious to me that we live in an age of specialization. From my perspective, our universities have been transformed into technical and trade schools where one learns a skill or a profession. The emphasis is on what to think rather than on how to think. Anything preceded by the adjective liberal is ridiculed by the knee-jerk masses on the Right. I once read an op-ed peice, substance long forgotten, where a university - doesn't matter which one - was attacked by the writer as a "liberal arts cesspool."

You know, NASA once had a beautiful mission scheduled which I believe would have been a sort of magic spaceship to engage the masses, and figuratively take them along for a ride. That mission was villified here and elsewhere in chorus of hisses and boos from the space crowd because it was "not real science."

Back on the old MSNBC Space Board, only a very few regulars, Raoul among them, spoke out in favor of Triana, which would have provided round-the-clock, near real-time, full-color, full disc images of our beautiful and lonely home planet.

Chased from the gantries in a hail of verbal vegetables, Triana now sits in the corner, wings clipped, wearing the dunce hat imposed upon it so charitably by the space cadets.

Never have the shortcomings of the engineering and scientific communities been so vividly on display.

sp