This thread has been more than illuminating. Thank you all for responding!
We live at a strange time where the abundance of information available is resulting in junk food for people's minds. Why bother understanding a scientific concept when people's opinions of it are readily available? Opinions are so much more interesting absorb and only take a few moments. It's come to a point where people's opinions of scientific ideas outweigh science.
Just look at the top two Scientific blogs of 2008 (
http://2008.weblogawards.org/polls/best-science-blog/): one trashes religion that other denies global warming. These are opinion oriented blogs that bastardize science.
What's truly shocking to me is the amount of effort some people put into supporting their opinions - the anti-vaccination campaigns are a great example of this - where they could have been educating themselves on the issue and truly obtaining knowledge.