Jerry Bruckheimer.
What?
I’m afraid I must disagree with you in turn regarding Gould. He was indeed a popular popularizer, but he was too often a populizer of falsehoods and error. His Marxism led him to a decidedly postmodernistic take on science, which led him in turn to some highly dubious and even nonsensical views.
The Mismeasure of Man is, in my view, mostly a fiasco of strawmen getting pointlessly pummeled with the blunt object known as postmodern political correctness, resulting in considerably more damage to science than Gould’s bogeymen entire threatens in modern times. And I can’t count how many times various creationists in debates have employed and continue to employ (with no small degree of accuracy) Gould’s arguments concerning the Burgess Shale as if it represented some approximation of Genesis, a view that Gould’s book does much to encourage and too little to correct. That would not have been the case had Gould been a more scrupulous and self-critical a scientist.
It’s true, as you point out, that Gould had a great many advocates and defenders, among them John Maynard Smith on occasion (as your quotation shows). But it’s clear from Smith’s wider context that he primarily applauded Gould because Gould brought a great deal of attention to their field, even though Gould’s ideas were too often rather flawed.
In the last analysis, whatever good he did as a populizer of science is inextricably linked with his popularization of ideologically driven horseshit. Even though I would probably agree that his work and ideas constituted a net plus overall, I hold that, in the end, it’s just not worth the bother of constantly having to correct all the people who came away with a mishmash of good and poor science.
I find it somewhat curious that your argument, in its entirety, is built upon how some people have chosen to represent it without respect to what it is Gould has actually said.
Gould seemed to have been saddened by this considering he said, in short, that it’s unfortunate that so many people (quote miners?) are able to read what he’s written and take it in a completely opposite manner to what he’d actually said. 
I’ll go with Robert Heinlein. It seems like half the time I meet engineers and scientists and we talk books, I find out they were big Heinlein fans as kids.
Bullshit. There’s little validity in your claims. I read and understood Gould’s actual words, and he was often just plain wrong, and not uncommonly foolishly so (especially, but not only, regarding The Mismeasure of Man, which consists almost entirely of political strawman-bashing). His whole approach to science was fundamentally ridiculous due to his blatant political / postmodern biases. The man couldn’t – or wouldn’t – even begin to properly recognize these atrocious biases, let alone fight them effectively, so when he got something right, it was hard to tell if it was the result of cogent scientific thinking or chance.
Again, bullshit.
Please defend your scurrilous charge that my “argument, in its entirety, is built upon how some people have chosen to represent it without respect to what it is Gould has actually said”. Was I “quote mining” when I wrote: “He was indeed a popular popularizer, but he was too often a populizer of falsehoods and error. His Marxism led him to a decidedly postmodernistic take on science, which led him in turn to some highly dubious and even nonsensical views”? How about when I wrote: “The Mismeasure of Man is, in my view, mostly a fiasco of strawmen getting pointlessly pummeled with the blunt object known as postmodern political correctness, resulting in considerably more damage to science than Gould’s bogeymen entire threatens in modern times”? Was that “quote mining” again? And how about when I wrote: “In the last analysis, whatever good he did as a populizer of science is inextricably linked with his popularization of ideologically driven horseshit. Even though I would probably agree that his work and ideas constituted a net plus overall, I hold that, in the end, it’s just not worth the bother of constantly having to correct all the people who came away with a mishmash of good and poor science”? Was that, too, “built upon how some people have chosen to represent it without respect to what it is Gould has actually said”?
Please justify your calumny, if you can.
I have to agree with both of you that Penn & Tellers show “Bullshit!” is indeed a wonderful example of putting scientific thought into the public mind. However, since it airs on a premium cable channel, I don’t think it should be considered “the greatest promoter of science in recent memory.” Although I think the water episode was fantastic. 
Depends on what you mean as recent. The respect for science started when Einstein became a celebrity. Before that science was far from the public eye. He was on the front pages, Tv and every magazine in the country.
What are you, some kind of filthy evolutionary psychologist? You know those morons wouldn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground.
Kidding, kidding :p! Like our oft-cited John Maynard Smith, “I tend to find myself disagreeing most strongly with whichever side I talked to last” on that battlefront ;). I do find fascinating the kind of contentiousness those academic spats raised, though.
But as to SJG, I guess we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
First of all it is probably inaccurate to call SJG a Marxist per se. He was certainly a lefty and ( like myself ) a Red Diaper Baby, but unlike some of his buddies like Lewontin, Levins or Kamin, he was not a doctrinaire Marxist. Though I’d agree it’s almost a semantic nitpick - a dialectical approach did seem to inform some of his analysis. I think you can criticize his arguments of this ground, but I’m not sure they automatically render them invalid.
Also politically correct or not, I’m afraid I tend to be a mild skeptic of intelligence testing myself, so I can’t fully agree with your assessment of The Mismeasure of Man. It may be wrong, but I think it is worth reading for one side of the argument. And I can’t really fully fault anyone who attracts the ire of J. Philippe Rushton :).
I also think it is unfair to attack Gould for perhaps inadvertently giving ammo to the creationists. There are certainly problems with Wonderful Life, for example*, but I think it takes deliberate misreading to equate any of Gould’s arguments with an attack on evolution itself. And I think that’s exactly what creationists did ( and do ) - deliberately misread. SJG was a pretty tireless crusader against that camp, both in print and in person and very effectively so, IMHO.
So, anyway - I disagree with your disagreement of my disagreement. Peace 
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- I think it was Jacques Gauthier I heard pointing out that it was obvious it was written by a non-systematist. Gould’s gushing over of the large number of phyla present in the Burgess Shale completely misses the point that taxonomic categories above the species level ( and arguably even then ) are artificial hierarchies that are not in any way comparable across taxa.
Tom Cruise, oops, nevermind, that’s Scientology.
I brought up Dawkins because I’ve heard a lot of talk about him lately, but I have to say that David Attenborough is a major reason why I’m now a biologist.
I would go with Beyond 2000 Productions ie the Mythbusters.
Almost all the others are too dense and highbrow in their output, and will mostly be watched (more to the point, read) by people who are into science anyway. You will say that many people such as Dawkins have a very readable, non-highbrow style of writing. Sure, compared to non-populists. But most people don’t read books at all, let alone books with an accessible populist style.
Mythbusters mix fun stuff with an absolutely fundamental, all important principle of science that is, to my mind, more important than any of the detail or beauty that a Dawkins or Sagan might promote, because it underlies their work.
That principle is: don’t believe something because it’s what is popularly believed, or Known to the Ancients or any other such shit: observe it, test it, build it, do it. See if it actually happens/is/works. Be empirical. If you get something wrong, try again. Re-test. BE effin wrong if that’s the result of your trying (don’t worry, someone will correct you) but don’t take things as “known” just because someone wrote it in an old book, or stated it categorically while standing on a box, or it’s believed by someone famous or rich.
It’s easy when you have a background thoroughly steeped in post-Enlightenment principles to forget how different things were, pre-Enlightenment. It’s also perhaps paranoid, but perhaps not, to see things slipping a little and to worry.
The thing about Mythbusters is that they gloss over the science to a large degree. Of course they use science to test the myths; but they tend to have a 30-second mile-high overview of the principles involved. Sagan, Kaku, et al., actually spend time explaining things, rather than throwing out factoids.
The OP asked about the greatest ‘promoter’ of science. Mythbusters appeals to people who like watching explosions. I doubt most of the people care much about the actual science. So if they use science and throw out a few lines about the science they’re using, but nobody is paying attention, are they really ‘promoting science’? I think Cosmos, The Day The Universe Changed/Connections, and the various science shows on The Science Channel capture the imagination better than a couple of entertaining yahoos that blow stuff up.
But most of the science shows you mention present science as a set of results found by scientists. Mythbusters actually demonstrates using experiment to discover things and make judgements about the world, which is more central to science then the fact that some scientists believe matter is made up of 37 dimensional super-blobs, or whatever incomprehensible yet grammatically correct factoids Kaku is touting.
Granted the actual experiments done by the Mythbusters are often not terribly convincing, even as a proof of concept. But I think promoting the idea of empiricism over received wisdom is more important to making people understand what science is about and why its important then telling them how many galaxies there are or how far away pluto is.
Sorry, but your reply implies an ignorance of the fundamental of the scientific way of thinking. They don’t gloss over science, they are doing science. They don’t talk about scientific knowledge much, but they talk about doing science all the time. They continually say “well here’s the myth, let’s see if we can re-create it” or “let’s get some actual x and see if it has y feature”. The science is so fundamental to the principle of the show, people are being inculcated with the most important single principle of science without even realising it. It’s not only good, it beautiful, man.
Most of those shows you mention are passing on scientific knowledge, that’s all.
Finally, I get sick of people who characterise Mythbusters as being all about explosions. There are entire shows with no explosions. At least half of almost every show has no explosions because each episode usually has either Jamie and Adam or the build team doing a spectacular myth, while the other does a more sedate myth.
I also get sick of people saying their science is sloppy. Sometimes it’s a bit slap dash. 8 times out of ten what they do is simple and clear and obviously correct.
Excellent post** Princhester**. Most science “stuff” is people telling. Mythbusters is people showing. According to my English Composition teacher, showing is better than telling. It also is not preachy. They aren’t banging it over your head. Mythbusters is what science is. “Hey, I wonder if this would work…boom ensues.”
The problem with Science is that it seems so complex, things like evolution get made out to be beyond the understanding of Joe Average. For years, my sig line was “want to prove evolution? Use the same bug spray for 5 years.” If Joe Average really thought about how much science actually contributes to a persons every day life, Joe just might find it more interesting. It isn’t just a guy in a lab. It’s a baby discovering that when they let go of things, they fall. Or that zits aren’t caused by chocolate after all. Or that the earth and life is far more complex than we give it credit for.
And to paraphrase Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson “I spend a lot of time looking at the universe, and I see a whole lot of stupid stuff.” And also “There are people in this world that don’t mind when they think about things that makes their brains hurt, they actually like it.”
Not to mention calling Intelligent Design “Intellectually lazy.”
Hawking had some good book/essays that I enjoyed reading, even though most of it probably went over my head.
Thanks Auntbeast, but I’m not saying anything that Zombie Feynman didn’t say a whole lot more succinctly in the link from post #8
He gets my vote, narrowly edging out my other favourites, Sagan and Cousteau.
Gerald Durrell also deserves an honourable mention - his My Family and Other Animals and Overloaded Ark nearly made me want to be a life scientist rather than a rockhound, but ultimately I think he was Attenborough-lite on the popularisation front, I don’t think any episode of Ark on the Move could stand up to even a mediocre *Life *episode. Still, props for the Jersey Zoo.
James Burke. That was a fantastic series and I’m now sharing the books with my child. I’d love to see reruns made available.