Science in Fiction: Deadly for Sales?

No, not science fiction, but science in fiction.

I've been told science in a fiction book will kill sales unless it is dumbed down to a fifth-grade level. I have figured that most of my readers were smarter than a fifth grader, but I suppose I could be wrong.

With science surrounding our lives -- from the quantum physics in cell phones to the physical underpinnings of consciousness itself -- have readers fled from science, preferring instead to marvel at the mystery and look upon scientists as the mysterious high priests of that which is incomprehensible?

If the latter is true, then what becomes of attempts of people to make sense of life and reality?

If the path to understanding leads along a path of science, and if people refuse to walk that way, they doom themselves to the selfsame mumbo-jumbo of the ancient past when spirits inhabited rocks and the Earth was the center of the universe.