It isn't just seniors, as an old fart who has always been interested in science, I don't see too many young people interested in it either. In fact, I never have. It's a cultural thing, science has a reputation as being uncool, the province of pencil-necked geeks and social misfits, almost effeminate.

It is also considered hard, and (shudder) too associated with math. In a society infatuated with material consumption and the acquisition of wealth and fairly well insulated from the natural world, a curiosity and appreciation of that world is sublimated. Add to this a natural anti-intellectual streak common to most people (even some extremely smart ones), and you get the science-is-for-sissies syndrome.

We live in a meritocracy where financial success is considered both a virtue and the result and reward of virtue: people are rich because they deserve to be. I believe the idea of someone devoting great talent and effort into a field not associated with financial success is viewed with suspicion, as if that individual is somehow contemptuous of the efforts and obsessions of others. To a certain extent, those who are financially successful due a gift such as music, athletics, or artistic celebrity are partially exempt from this prejudice--until they get too wealthy. Then they are attacked as being somehow unworthy of their monetary success. The athlete or rock star makes too much money, the team owner or recording executive rarely gets the same criticism. Gross over-generalization and stereotyping? Sure. But all statistical averages are an oversimplification of complex phenomena.

You asked me, so I told you.