Americans have some sort of deep distrust of science, which is fairly ironic, as its science that helped make (along with abundant natural resources and stable government) great. You know, nowhere else in the developed world is man-made global warming or evolution up for debate. Yet in in the US, just one Republican candidate (who had no chance), endorsed science on AGW, and most of the candidates want creationism to be taught to kids. I had a Catholic monk for a religion teacher, and he said that creationism was simply a way of explaining gods effect on the world to illiterate peasants, and that the world was billions of years old.
Dammit America.