The Real Reason People Don’t Trust in Science Has Nothing to Do with Scientists

The real reason people don’t trust science has nothing to do with scientists

Who Dan Vergano edited by Jeanna Bryner

“We’re all trying to find the guy who did this,” he said hot dog–costumed protagonist of a 2019 comedy sketch, pretending not to know who crashed a hot dog-shaped car.

Turned around in the draft popular memethe audience didn’t buy his story. Scientists, and the rest of us, I might follow their lead now, on reflection November annual Pew Research Center survey public trust in science.

The Pew poll found that 76% of respondents “have a lot or enough confidence in scientists to act in the public interest.” That’s up slightly from last year, but still down from pre-pandemic measures, suggesting that an additional 10 Americans have lost trust in scientists since 2019.

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Why? Many news reports about Pew’s statements and findings somehow missed the obvious culprit: the four years and counting of a propaganda. the campaign according to Allies of Donald Trump to change blame the scientists for himself the disaster of the first administration, Mishandling of the COVID pandemic that has killed him so far at least 1.2 million Americans.

Even a hot dog would be blanched transparency of the goats. He was obviously committed inoculate Trump for voters to blame for the pandemic. Propaganda started four years ago with a shameless USA TODAY screed by the economic adviser of his administration Peter Navarro (later sent to federal prison in unrelated positions). Navarro then wrongly blamed Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for the administration’s massive pandemic response. Similar evils It continued from the Trump White House, leading to years of right wing nonsense and surreal hearings ended last June with the Republican pandemic committee members are doing everything but wearing hot dog costumes while asking questions Fauci. The eyebrow behind a scientific leader Covid vaccines that saved millions of lives in listen fighter prove it shameful as well as mendacious.

The results of the Pew poll, however, show that this propaganda worked for some Republican voters. The survey’s decline in public trust in science is almost entirely within that circle, dipping from 85 percent approval. among Republican voters Now to 66 percent in April 2020. It hardly moved those who weren’t treated to nightly doses of revisionist history in an echo chamber where outlets pretended to be. to mask, the school and business restrictions, and vaccinesthey weren’t the needs when dealing with a deadly new disease. No wonder Republican voters the excess mortality rate was 1.5 times Who are among the Democrats after the emergence of the COVID vaccines.

Instead of pointing out the role of this propaganda in their numbers, Pew’s statement on the survey simply pointed to the perception that scientists are not “good communicators”, with 52% of respondents and 47% saying “researchers feel superior”. to others” in the survey.

That explanation echoes the “jack me” signal that has been mistrusted by the scientific establishment since at least 1985, when the UK’s Royal Society warned of “(h)ostimosity, even indifference, towards science and technology” in a report. Public understanding of science. “Scientists must learn to communicate better with all segments of the public,” he concluded.

That prescription matches the results of the Pew Poll with scientific answers, said Marcia McNutt, head of the National Academy of Sciences. Washington Post: “(T)his gives us an opportunity to re-examine what we need to do to restore trust in science.” And it goes along with the advice from December NASEM report On scientific misinformation: “Scientists, medical professionals, and health professionals who choose to take on senior roles as public communicators of science should understand how their communications can be interpreted out of context or in the wrong context.” This completely excludes the deliberate misinterpretation of science to advance political goals, the main type of science disinformation that dominates the modern public sphere.

It’s not a secret what’s going on: Legislators funded by the oil industry and other vowels have By decades of similarly vilified climate scientists to avoid paying the price of global warming. A study published in 2016 American Sociological Review concluded that the slow erosion of the US public’s trust in science from 1974 to 2010 was almost entirely among conservatives. Such conservatives accepted “limited government” politics, which collides with that of science “fifth branch” advisory role in implementing regulations—the FDA is most clearly resisting Trump’s wholesale calls— approval of dangerous drugs to treat covid This flavor of politics resulted in mistrust of scientists, the collateral damage of a half-century-long assault on regulation. The gross inadequacy of the limited and scientific government response to the 2020 pandemic only served to fuel this resentment, hate Aimed at Fauci—to give us the reliability of the science we see today.

“Surveys are very suitable for measuring attitudes and describing changes in views over time. They’re less adept at examining potential causal factors,” says Alec Tyson, the survey’s lead author, when asked why Pew stopped short of making this apparent connection. “While it’s beyond the scope of this particular effort, we share the importance of partisan rhetoric and the broader information environment in shaping views. in academic efforts to understand the task”.

Their displeasure does not mean that we should all believe that the mistrust of science comes from politics. Perhaps the clearest sign of the propaganda campaign is that Republican politicians have acquired their own supply of anti-science hokum. With Trump back in the White House, he is completely unqualified to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose antibacterial defense It caused 83 deaths from measles American Samoa in 2018. He has chosen Stanford University for the National Institutes of Health. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the three authors 2020 of a deadly plan gone wrong—He then propelled Trump to the White House—to encourage coronaviruses infections that would cause, “serious illness and which can prevent the death of hundreds of thousands of people“, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America. None of these hot dog guys should be allowed anywhere near our health agencies.

“Obviously it’s this guy, yeah,” the cops say at the end of the hot-dog-guy sketch, before taking off after him. Today it is as easy as making the same call to acknowledge where the mistrust of science comes from.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily their own. American scientific