I haven't seen such an attitude, either. Not stated so explicitly, anyway.

What is more common is the attitude that, for example, we should put off manned space exploration "until we solve all of our problems here on Earth." I have personally witnessed this attitude in high school cheerleaders and DC lawyers.

I've seen it, in various strengths/flavors, in the southern United States. My guess is that it's more common among people whose complete life experience is so far removed from any scientific endeavor that they've never needed to understand how science works or how it gets turned into technology.

In the interest of fairness: the opinions of some scientists, whose complete life experience is so far removed from any blue collar work that they've never needed to understand why some people don't know anything about science, are often equally as uninformed. (Note: I'm not suggesting Dr. Plait is in this category.)

Indeed, the whole article comes off as strawman-ish. Nobody [to first approximation * ] ever says something like "I mean, seriously? Scientists?! What have they ever done for me?" because, well, that attitude is quickly discredited by a moment's thought.

Now, what you will find is people with attitudes like

1. Useful sciencey things like MRIs and clean water are important, but a lot of what's going on is just a pointless waste of time and money (seriously, you spent how much to figure out the internal mass distribution of Jupiter?), or

2. Science has done all sorts of bad things to the rainforest and stuff!

3. Yes well, science is very important, but we have major budget problems so it's inevitable that pure research budgets need to be cut, or

4. Why are we spending all this money on [huge science project of little practical utility] when [far more urgent and heartrending problem]

But these are much more difficult arguments than the one which Phil Plait appears to want to have with the imaginary dude in his head.

You see it whenever someone talks down science using an implementation of science as a medium.