IMHO Sagan was always more of an entertainer than a genuine scientist. I have to confess that I've always cringed when I heard one of the exobiologists refer affectionately to him as "Carl" like he was one of the family. I've heard some of the old hands from JPL comment cynically that the only time they saw Sagan was when the news media was nearby. Take a look at some of Sagan's papers and you'll find something that's amusing. Sagan perfected the fine art of the minimum publishable unit, i.e. he'd publish a paper, then modify it ever so slightly to publish it again then perhaps he might squeeze a third publication out of it and so on. What was Sagan's main original contribution to science? He was the founding editor to "Icarus" which is a respectable journal although arguably redundant. He was a member of a large group of people studying the Mars surface images from Mariner and Viking. His doctors thesis was on exobiology. The popular media would put him on the same pedestal with Einstein and Feynmann. IMHO, this doesn't seem justified.
Gary
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