The bit about Gould rings true in many areas. It is easy to think that someone writing about something has all the right answers until that person writes something you know for certain to be wrong. You then wonder whether he is just as wrong about the other stuff he wrote. The mainstream media do not have a monopoly on spin. Algore is a classic example.
The general U.S. public is, unfortunately, not very well schooled in many of the sciences. High school and general college classes generally do not spend as much time on evolution as is really needed to give the students a reasonably good understanding of it. Even Biology majors often get only a moderate amount of exposure to it unless that is their area of concentration.
