I think that science is grossly lacking in good spokespeople who are respected in the field, and it should be rewarded more within the academy, not less.
When a large fraction of the population has frankly anti-scientific beliefs and when funding for continued scientific endeavor depends on votes, science needs to continually justify and promote itself in the public eye.
Are there dangers to that? Yes. But it's worse than holing up in the ivory tower to only quietly do research.
I agree, but it's unlikely that they will get respect and reward within the academy. They are just as susceptible to feelings of envy as people outside the academy.
You can see this manifest itself in the academy's treatment of Carl Sagan, and in the many ramblings of Murray Gell-Mann about Richard Feynman. Sure, their expositions of the science may not have been rigorous and they weren't perfect human beings, but maybe that's what it takes to popularize science and draw people in.
I often see the role of science popularization as that of turned the science illiterate to literate, not the uneducated to the educated.
When a large fraction of the population has frankly anti-scientific beliefs and when funding for continued scientific endeavor depends on votes, science needs to continually justify and promote itself in the public eye.
Are there dangers to that? Yes. But it's worse than holing up in the ivory tower to only quietly do research.