DESPITE their enthusiasm for the likes of Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, young Americans aren't too keen on science. Primary- and secondary-school students lag behind their international counterparts in terms of test scores. Relatively few go into the field. Both China and Japan produce a larger percentage of science graduates than America.

The effect is that "growing industries in science and technology have twice as many openings as we have workers who can do the job", says Barack Obama. That claim is disputed, but both Democrats and Republicans appear concerned. Some in Congress think some positive PR will help.

A bipartisan group of legislators have sponsored a bill that would create a science laureate tasked with exciting kids about careers in science. The position would be honorary and unpaid, thereby avoiding any fuss over budgets. Leaders in the House of Representatives were so confident of its passage that they put it up for vote under a procedure reserved for innocuous measures and requiring a two-thirds majority to pass.

But mixing politics and science is a bit like mixing acids and sulfides: the result is often toxic. In this case the bill was dropped from the docket after the American Conservative Union (ACU), an activist group, expressed concern that a science laureate might espouse politicised views. Mr Obama, warned the ACU, could name liberal scientists to the post in order to sway public opinion on issues like climate change.

Of course, most scientists are liberals (see chart). Very few call themselves Republicans, in part because most believe in things many Republicans don’t, like evolution and anthropogenic climate change. In this, they are at odds with congressmen like Lamar Smith of Texas. Mr Smith is the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He is a climate-change sceptic. Earlier this year he rankled boffins by trying to increase political oversight of the National Science Foundation's grant-making process. Yet Mr Smith is also the primary sponsor (along with Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California) of the science laureate bill.

Mr Smith’s views are shared by a remarkable swathe of the American public. Nearly 60% of Republican voters (and 37% overall) believe global warming is a hoax. A 2012 poll reported that 35% of respondents thought climate scientists untrustworthy. Despite vigorous objection from scientists, 40% of Americans support schools teaching intelligent design, a form of creationism, according to YouGov, a polling firm.

Americans’ inclination to spurn scientific consensus and be unreasonably suspicious of research, more than a gap in enthusiasm, will make it tough to get kids interested in science. The science laureate bill may eventually make it back to the House floor. Squaring it with a politics that insists on the validity of scientific viewpoints inconsistent with rigorously reviewed, well-accepted research is another matter. Even if someone emerges to extol the virtues of science to American schoolchildren, it will be hard to hear him above the echoes of doubt.