L. Ron Hubbard's usual story about science and scientists runs something like "Well, this so-called big-time egghead scientist, he was telling me..."

Follow with a description of how much this guy resembled a donkey with glasses as he gave LRH a superior look in the course of his explanation, the details of which get handwaved aside -- of course this man knows nothing about the surface of Jupiter -- had he ever been there? Well, of course...(insert smug piggy-eyed smile, put hand in pocket, let out gut). End with witty reposte putting the arrogant so-and-so hilariously in his place. Hee-haw.

To a modern listener, this doesn't sound remotely funny. Most middle-class people have college degrees, or have attended college sometime in their lives, and quite a few even know a professor or two. Lots of people have heard academic subjects discussed on TV, TED, or You Tube, and it's fairly obvious that the march of scientific progress is not about the clash of egos.

But all this was true of the man-in-the-street fifty some-odd years ago. Until the G.I. Bill, most American men hadn't gone to college, and even fewer women. Unless you lived in the Northeast, or such islands of academic activity such as Chicago, the Bay Area, or Virginia/DC, you probably never had met a Ph.D, and had no idea of what went on in a lab or a lecture hall. The popular idea of a professor was an pompous, boring know-it-all, who could speak several dead languages but relied on his housekeeper to find his keys, who could tell you how a machine worked, but couldn't get it to run. Scientists were even worse, and doctors...well, they'd vivisect you as soon as look at you, especially if you were in the hospital. And then psychiatrists....On the other hand, all the positive images of scientists showed them working alone, courageous renegades armed with superhuman powers of intellect valiantly battling for the overthrow of the obviously false graven-in-stone status quo in favor of the Truth.

You know, like a van Vogt story.

Little wonder that LRH could play both ends against the middle (at least in the lecture hall): on one hand, the engaging just-plain-folks raconteur and Man of Action who could fix a tramp steamer's boiler room with sealing wax, spit and a few good whacks well enough to last out a raging typhoon despite the naysayings of "the experts", and on the other, a man trained in quantum physics who could work out the whole of topology on the back of an envelope as a rainy day's diversion, whose philosophies were backed with real research, "strictly test tube" results. Your brain knows all the 'tricks of a computer'! Ain't that grand?

So, Reader's Digest isn't "the usual herald of the scientific community"? It certainly was where most of his listeners heard about science, that and perhaps a couple of special issues of Life Magazine or a boring show on Sunday afternoon TV. Never mind about the real meanings of the word "antediluvian" or "gal-ACK-see", or exactly how big a trillion was, or whether the Piltdown Man existed or whether Man's bivalve ancestors coexisted with birds -- what difference does it make? The scientists were probably just making it up themselves, to sell us all a bill of goods.

And besides, what do they know? They can't even find their keys.