Why do you think these characters are trying to be “rationalists”, even a misguided idea of “rationalists”? I don’t watch Star Trek, but as far as I know Mr Spock never describes himself as a rationalist. He may use words like ‘logical’ and ‘probability’, but—unless there’s something I don’t know, which is very possible—he does not come out and say ‘I am a rationalist’, or claim to adhere to any of the principles that make up rationality. I’m similarly unaware of any character that explicitly sets out to be a rationalist, and repeatedly fails.
As far as I can tell, Mr Spock and his character type aren’t portrayed wrongly as rationalist, they’re portrayed correctly as introverted, stubbornly skeptic and/or overestimating their own intellect. Nothing more. When Spock says “Captain, we have a 94.92% chance of dying” when the chance of dying is 10%, I don’t believe the scriptwriter’s message is “probability is a crap science”, I believe it’s “Spock’s understanding of probability is crap, and he vastly overestimates it”.
This post assumes a very positive view of humanity. It assumes that people aren’t studying science in large enough numbers because the knowledge isn’t exciting and attractive enough. The alternative assumption is that people aren’t studying science because they’re thick, or lazy, or both.
In Britain, fewer and fewer young people are choosing to study science at A-level (16-18) and university, despite the increased number of them continuing education after compulsory education ends (16). This is mainly blamed on them choosing to do new, ‘soft’ options, of which Media Studies is the primary scapegoat (but a Google for ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’ or a flick through the prospectus of a lower-order university will find plenty of others). This can’t be attributed to the non-secret nature of science, because Media Studies is just as non-secret. If the open nature of science was really the problem, it would be a problem shared by every single subject from science to media studies to plumbing apprenticeships, and enrolment would be falling in every subject, not just science.
I don’t actually disagree with the main point of the post—that secret knowledge is more attractive—but it wouldn’t solve the problem of lack of interest in science. If science went cultish, they would see a short-term increase in interest, but then media studies academics would hide their ‘knowledge’ as well, and we’d be back where we started. Even if the knowledge was secret I’ve no doubt that most young people would consider the secret media studies knowledge more attractive than the secret science knowledge. “The chanting isn’t as weird, and the robes are better, and even under those hoods you can tell the Physics cult is a total sausagefest.”