I see this sentiment elsewhere in the thread, but my thinking upon reading the article was that these children are not just abandoning science research jobs by quitting science, but also relatively well-paying jobs in fields for which science is prerequisite -- medicine, engineering, etc.
Seeing what PhDs get paid, I think the intersection of people smart enough to qualify for a PhD, and the people idealistic enough to forgo better pay in other industries is shrinking.
If you replace 'sexy' with 'viable', this could make sense for pure sciences. Given the size of a student loan it can take to pay for a degree (especially if you need more than just a Bachelor's), pure sciences could be losing some kids to engineering over potential salary. Those kids would still fall within the scope of this article though (STEM in general).
