scientists as superstars

As opposed to posing as an expert business-man on "The Apprentice"?

Justin Bieber's music videos have well over a billion views, he's more famous than all scientists in the world put together.

the video for "Gagnam Style" by Psy has pushing 4 billion views alone; more man-hours have been spent watching that one video than every scientific documentary or lecture given by a scientist in human history, probably.

OPPA GAGNAM STYLE! it's a pretty catchy tune I admit.

Billions and billions...

And far too predictable. Sloman is.

("Oppa" is literally "older brother" but colloquially it might be used as a term of endearment by a young woman to refer to a fashionable older man of means, a "ladies man" if you will.)

But musicians optimize their performance precisely to generate fame and fortune. When scientists do that, it grossly distorts the science.

"Daddy" or "Dada"

Americans tend to be vaguely anti-intellectual and elitist/deferential to authority by nature; liberals and conservatives alike, yeah my "leftist" friends and acquaintances might sing Bill Nye's praises do you think they want to spend any time listening to me, some random guy, tell them about electromagnetic theory in detail? they don't, their eyes will glaze over and you can see them mentally putting you in the "Yeesh. what a huge nerd!"-category. Bo I don't have my own TV show.

And another time a blue-collar-looking guy who was I'm assuming definitely not a "leftist" asked me what I did for a living in Starbucks when I was writing computer code I started to say "Well what I'm doing at the moment is optimizing a...." he was tuned out of that nascent conversation before I even finished the first sentence. Long gone.

This can either annoy you or as I do just roll eyes and shrug, lol white Americans. If I want to have a technical discussion about science or tech with a stranger who's enthusiastic I'll find an Indian.

There are a fair number of American women who seem to want to call an older man "Daddy" too, never been big into that one. I'm not your Daddy. Go find your real Dad.

...

When you've referred to 'science' here, your views have always been distortions anyway. So, how would you see a difference?

That explains why we invented light bulbs, telegraph, telephone, airplanes, triodes, superhets, transistors, ICs, lasers, nuclear reactors, bbq ribs, and the Declaration of Independence.

Possibly.

However, his comment is useful, accurate and apposite.

That would be a risk, but not necessarily a problem. There's no cause and effect there.

Those tended to be invented by individual Americans they weren't some collective effort. I'm sure a large fraction of the US population thought airplanes were straight nonsense until they saw one in the air, and that seemed to be the opinion of the popular press as well. Ridiculous, a total theoretical impossibility! some guy who wasn't an aeronautical scientist or engineer might say. oh. would you look at that.

Whomever invented BBQ ribs was probably told by many of his compatriots "That'll never sell..."

And then after they saw one millions of the same Americans told their friends "Well. you know. I always knew it was possible. I was one of the earliest supporters of manned flight if you recall. Truly amazing what we Americans can do when we put our minds to it!"

Summary... partly in the right area, but certainly not close enough for a cigar.

Nope, but close.

UK court ruled that Edison infringed Swan's patent. US Patent Office also invalidated Edison's patent.

Nope. Not even close.

Even if we ignore the telegraphs proposed in the 17C and widely implemented during the Napoleonic wars, the first commercial long distance electric telegraph was installed in 1839 in the UK.

Nope, not even close.

First person to understand and demonstrate the principle of flight was Cayley. His first manned (well, boyed) flight was in 1949.

There were many others, notably Otto Lilienthal.

Close. See Robert von Lieben.

Arguable. Much of the inspiration and work was from European refugees.

The first industrial scale nuke was in England.

Shrug.

Americans don't tend to invent things for their own sake, anyone can make a thing.

We invent marketable products. That is to say Edison didn't think of the idea for a light bulb, his company just made one that didn't suck. The Wrights didn't invent the idea of heavier-than-air flight, but they built the first airplane you didn't have to be totally insane to want to get in. Only partly insane. Good enough to move some product.

Bingo. Creative people come here so they can create stuff.

If you shrug bbq ribs, you've never had good ones.

But none of the other possible prior inventions went anywhere.

Given that the US is about 5% of the planet's population, we sure create a lot of stuff. And a lot of that stuff is created by amateurs.

Of course there is. The requirement to publish is part of the fame-and-fortune thing. Some serious fraction of published "scientific" research can't be reproduced.

More than anything else, more than a need for truth, people seek power. Economists and scientists aren't immune from that.