The risk information vacuum of evolution

In class, we discussed the concept of a 'risk information vacuum'. The idea came from the book Mad Cows and Mother's Milk. Basically, the vacuum is the space where information is not shared between experts and the public. Basically, the information from science isn't properly communicated to the public, and the fears and wants of the public aren't communicated back to the scientists.

I was thinking about the evolution creation debate and I found it somewhat hard to really identify properly. I'm not sure it even existed. At the very least, it doesn't seem to exist any more. Not in terms of what the public seems to want to know... Evolution is fairly widely accepted. It's penetrated into most aspects of culture now, and most people understand somewhat the ideas of it and natural selection (at least here in Australia that seems to be the case).

However, I do think that the creationist movement seems to be trying to pretend there is a vacuum to put their information into. It seems by telling people that evolution isn't widely accepted by science or that scientists don't really know anything about it yet, they feel they are filling this gap between science and people that doesn't really exist.

These tactics also reminded me a little of something in economics my old house mate had told me about once. So next post I'm going to cover evolution as a monopoly (I think I've got the behaviours of the groups right for a monopoly).