Sagan and Gould both died about 10-15 years before their time. Had they not been robbed, they'd still be here as powerful and persuasive voices for science and against ID.
Perhaps you are right, but it's not like Sagan and Gould were 30-something when they passed; where are their replacements?
Plus, the same argument cannot be made for others like Ernst Mayr, who recently passed at the age of 100. Or EO Wilson, who's currently around 80.
I blame the science community and academia for the lack of replacements for Sagan and Gould. Those two took flack from their peers for the time they spent popularizing science, going on Carson, etc. Popularizing science ought to be a part of a scientist's job description. And department chairs ought not to frown and give bad reviews to associate professors who spend the occasional summer doing something to popularize science or get into the crevo debate.
The conglomerated media dislikes complex answers, stuff that takes more than 6 seconds to say. Science gives complex answers, and I would expect that many scientists would take it as an affront to have their work whittled down to a talking point. I know I would. It's dishonest and intellectually lazy, but then again, that's all they give us so that's what we've come to expect. (vicious cycle, eh?)
I thought Bill Bryson did a wonderful job with "A Short History of Nearly Everything." Why not him?
I once read a thought by someone, I don't remember the author but it was out of the back pages of Forbes Magazine, that said when a great person dies, one tends to look for the next great person in the same field but they are not to be found in the same field.
Jimmy Carter, former President and Nuclear Engineer is pretty good talking in one of his latest books about Intelligent Design.
Former Senator Gary Hart penned a small volume a couple of years ago
entitled "God and Caesar in America an essay on religion & politics" which touches a bit on intelligent design but mostly talks about the problem of Religious Fundamentalists in American Politics today.
Both good reads and I recommend them.
Somebody offer biologist Ken Miller a TV show -- he's perfect. And he's even a person of faith!
Having seen Ken Miller's presentations on video, I'm inclined to agree. He would probably respectfully decline, however.
Popularizers do seem to take a lot of heat, which is a sad thing. Folks don't seem to realize that you need to dilute some pieces so that they lose a lot of the nuances.
One of the troubles is that we don't have much in the way of well-respected science popularizers now. Someone new would have to dumb things way down for the masses for quite some time in order to gain 'street cred' before large numbers of folks would be willing to sit through something by them with a few more nuances... and before anyone would bankroll such a project.
A great talent for metaphor is called upon. A good or better than Sagan's "what if the speed of light were 30 miles per hour?"
Every time I watch Cosmos on DVD, I desperately, desperately miss Carl Sagan.
I agree completely with FastEddie and others who think that part of a scientist's job description should be to popularize science, and not be penalized for it.
As for stogoe's comment about the media requiring 6-second answers, this is an unfortunate fact of life. One route is to go the Gore/Kerry/Biden way and give long, complex answers, and the other way is to go the Bush way and give consise, simplified views. Guess which way works?
But this works not just because of the media. The media does this because ultimately it's what PEOPLE want. PBS and NPR and History Channel have long drawn out discussions of complicated issues, and their ratings are much lower.
The tenth anniversary of Carl Sagan's death is coming up in December. How prescient was his "Demon Haunted World."
Have any of you ever gone to a professional scientific convention? I have.
Have any of you gone to “paper sessions” at those conventions? I have.
Many of the presenters on stage at those sessions fight to keep from falling asleep while their peers read in monotone from a paper, designed to be read, not presented orally. Most of the audience engage in an equal fight so as not to be disrespectful to their peers. Have any of you been in a giant lecture hall fighting the same fight in a lecture delivered by one of the university’s distinguished scientists. My degree will tell you I have on multiple occasions.
And, how many of you have been in the same lecture hall listening to materials being presented by someone barely older and barely more knowledgeable than you?
Many university researchers avoid lecturing like the plague because academic success depends on publishing and presenting the results of research. If the academic hours are devoted to research and writing, they cannot be devoted to lecture preparation and presentation.
An example: Most students hate statistics, and high on their hate list in statistics classes is probability. When I got to that topic I told them to bring in a pair of dice, a deck of cards and a few lottery tickets. I could count on at least one student familiar with craps (who was delighted to describe the game), and another who was familiar with blackjack (equally delighted to describe that game). Without going into details, most of the class left understanding probability.
The point? Scientists have to understand how to present scientific ideas to the uninformed.
Good point, Dr. Buchanan. It's not much different in my mind to finding a programmer who can write documentation for the non-technical user. I ran into many (during my former life as a tech. writer) who even considered it beneath them. Now I wonder whether something doesn't go on within academia...
Ooops--I meant "something similar". (Hopefully "something" does indeed go on within academia, or I've wasted a heckuva lot of tuition money for the privilege of nodding off in cinderblock rooms under flourescent lighting...)
Richard G. Buchanan is absolutely correct.
To some extent this is a top-down problem caused by the demands on Professors by Chairs and Deans above them, who decide on tenure, promotions, teaching assignments, and related issues.
While I understand that the primary focus of a research university is to conduct great research, it can be taken too far. Teaching, or communicating results with the general public, should not be beneath scientists. In fact, in many cases, I fear it is over their heads. 
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