Do you think the public trust of science has wained because interest groups have abused the word, "science"?

No, I actually think that the majority of people take statistics and scientific claims at face value. This is proved by the fact that advertisers still uses phrases such as 'lasts twice as long', or 'adds upto 50% more'. I know those claims are not very scientific, but this point extends to the news, where news readers still say 'scientists have recently discovered', and there is suddenly a wave of regurgitation of information around my town and almost everyone buys into the latest miracle skin cream.

i think abuse of the word "science" even in the scientific community (string theory is *psylosphy*, not science, it cannot be proven/disproven therefore it is not science) has caused so much confusion and harm that the very progress of the elightenment is threatened, and we are returning to an anything-goes religios dogmatic i-feel-therefore-it-is-true world. Voltaire pointed out that when scientists disagree, they can point to the natural world to resolve their desputes (make experiments) but when religious disagree, war is the only thing that resolves their disputes.

Yes. Especially among the religious, it seems as if they have attached a negative connotation towards the word.

The very sad fact is, most people are scientifically illiterate, and they fall victim to those fraudulent religious groups that rely on gullible, science-fearing people to fill their coffers. Ultimately, the fault belongs to academia, not ultra-religious groups that are faking the controversy. People like Carl Sagan, as a wonderful example, as well as others like Stephen Hawking, were valuable at getting the average person involved and interested in scientific endeavors. They were instrumental in passing information to the public without having them confused with big words, complicated acronyms, and science-specific jargon. They explained immensely complicated subjects in layman's terms. Most of academia was disinterested in engaging anyone other than fellow scientists, and these people were shunned by academia for what they felt was self-indulgence and egotism. They felt, for example, that Sagan would be doing much more good if he pursued science, instead of stardom. Sagan and others were heavily criticized for bringing the public up to speed on scientific progress, discovery, and process. Now, with the activism of Creationism and ID (ID is Creationism by a different name), people are falling heavily for pseudoscience, lacking any true understanding of what science is, how it works, and why Creationism/ID doesn't fit. The following video on YouTube is quite long (about 2 hours), but if you fast-forward to the later part, Dr Miller is asked a question very similar to this one. You should check out his answer. The rest of it is worth watching too, if you're on the fence about evolution being true, or ID being science. El Chistoso

For me it really hasn't because when groups like agribusiness use the term scientific, I think yeah right, whatever. However, I imagine it has for a great deal of the population. I tend to be a bit cynical with stuff like that.