One of the benefits of the pandemic, people are now a lot less willing to accept everything the 'experts' feed them.
The percentage of Americans who believe science has had a positive impact on society is down by 8% from the last time Pew Research Center conducted a similar survey of the public’s thoughts on science
One of the benefits of the pandemic, people are now a lot less willing to accept everything the 'experts' feed them.
The percentage of Americans who believe science has had a positive impact on society is down by 8% from the last time Pew Research Center conducted a similar survey of the public’s thoughts on science back in November 2021.
However, the previous statistic doesn’t reveal the true nature of the problem since the total percentage of Americans who think science is a societal good is down by 16% against data gathered before the outbreak of the global pandemic.
Roughly one-third of Americans (34%) believe science has been just as bad for society as it has been good and almost one in ten (8%) said that they thought science has had a mostly negative impact on society.
Unfortunately, trust in scientists themselves is down 14 points from the early stages of the pandemic and the share of Americans who reported having a great deal of confidence in scientists has fallen from 39% to 23% in the most recent polling.
Over one-quarter of respondents (27%) told Pew Research Center pollsters that they had “not too much or no confidence to act in the public’s best interests,” a percentage the think tank noted was only 12% in April 2020.
The average person might think that the polling would be skewed toward one segment of the country’s political spectrum but it actually found that the county's fall in trust in science was an issue that affected both sides of the political aisle, although not equally.
The percentage of Democrats who noted having a great deal of confidence in scientists fell from 55% in November 2020 to just 37% in the latest polling. However, the problem was much more pronounced with Republicans.
So what’s causing the decrease in America’s trust in science and scientists? One expert blames disinformation surrounding the global pandemic and COVID-19 for changing how Americans think about science.