XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.global-warming, alt.atheism   
   XPost: sci.skeptic, alt.politics.democrats   
   From: x@y.com   
      
   jjdina wrote:   
      
   >o   
      
   Science is a big leftist conspiracy designed to undermine MAGA ideology and   
   bankrupt the oil and coal companies who the President is beholden to.   
      
   That's why there are only a few Conservative scientists and the majority of   
   them are leftists.   That's why Trump decides what is valid science, not   
   them.  Scientists who disagree with the government's agenda must be   
   discredited and punished.   We have no interest in what they have to say.   
      
      
   From Anti-Government to Anti-Science: Why Conservatives Have Turned Against   
   Science Open Access   
      
   Naomi Oreskes,   
   Erik M. Conway   
   Author and Article Information   
   Daedalus (2022) 151 (4): 98–123.   
   https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_01946   
      
      
      
   Empirical data do not support the conclusion of a crisis of public trust in   
   science. They do support the conclusion of a crisis of conservative trust   
   in science: polls show that American attitudes toward science are highly   
   polarized along political lines. In this essay, we argue that conservative   
   hostility toward science is rooted in conservative hostility toward   
   government regulation of the marketplace, which has morphed in recent   
   decades into conservative hostility to government, tout court. This   
   distrust was cultivated by conservative business leaders for nearly a   
   century, but took strong hold during the Reagan administration, largely in   
   response to scientific evidence of environmental crises that invited   
   governmental response. Thus, science-particularly environmental and public   
   health science-became the target of conservative anti-regulatory attitudes.   
   We argue that contemporary distrust of science is mostly collateral damage,   
   a spillover from carefully orchestrated conservative distrust of   
   government.   
      
   In 2020, scientists performed an astonishing feat. In less than one year,   
   they produced not one but several safe and effective vaccines against the   
   novel coronavirus, sars-cov-2. Yet, by the summer of 2021, barely half of   
   all Americans had been fully vaccinated, even though free vaccines were   
   widely available. By the autumn of 2021, ten thousand deaths following   
   vaccination had been reported, and only six positively attributed to the   
   vaccine, with more than four hundred and fifty million vaccine doses   
   administered. This is a vaccine-death rate of 0.00000001 percent.1 Yet   
   public health officials still struggled to persuade the remaining Americans   
   to get vaccinated.   
      
   Commentators have read this opposition as evidence of a crisis of public   
   trust in science. Crisis-in-science narratives are widespread in both the   
   scientific literature and in mass-media reporting, but the available   
   evidence does not support the narrative.2 The General Social Survey has   
   long included a question about trust in the leaders of major institutions,   
   and its polling shows that most Americans evince confidence in scientific   
   institutions. In 2021, the largest share of respondents answered that they   
   had “a great deal of confidence,” rather than “only some” or “hardly any”   
   confidence, in scientific institutions.3 In fact, scientific and medical   
   leaders are generally second only to military leaders in public   
   estimation.4 Moreover-and contrary to popular impression-overall trust in   
   scientific leaders has not changed since the 1970s. A 2018 poll by   
   Research!America found that more than 70 percent of Americans believe that   
   government investments in science and technology pay off in the long run. A   
   recent report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that analyzed   
   the Research!America poll, as well as other data, found that most Americans   
   view scientific research as beneficial, support an active role for science   
   and scientists in public life, trust scientists to tell the truth and   
   report findings accurately, and believe that scientists should play a major   
   role in shaping public policy with respect to health and the environment.5   
      
   These findings do not support the conclusion of a crisis of public trust in   
   science. However, available data do support the conclusion of a crisis of   
   conservative trust in science. Reaction to scientific findings is highly   
   polarized, with Republican voters and self-identified conservatives far   
   more likely than Democrats and self-identified liberals to reject consensus   
   scientific findings, particularly in the areas of climate change and COVID-   
   19 response. In 2020, 88 percent of Democrats agreed with scientific   
   findings that climate change was a major threat to the well-being of the   
   United States, but only 31 percent of Republicans thought so.6 Similarly,   
   94 percent of Democrats believe that the documented increase in global   
   temperature is due to human activities (again, consistent with the   
   scientific consensus), but only 69 percent of Republicans do. When it comes   
   to the question of whether the globe is warming at all, the proportion of   
   Republicans accepting that conclusion has decreased since 2000, from about   
   75 percent to only about 55 percent, even as scientists have declared the   
   fact of global warming to be “unequivocal.”7 These patterns cannot be   
   linked in any obvious way to who holds the presidency. Democratic   
   acceptance of climate science and concern about climate change increased   
   during both the Obama and Trump administrations, but Republican views were   
   largely unchanged until 2019, when extreme weather events-including the   
   largest fire in California history-may have shifted some people's views.8   
      
   There is a similar pattern in reactions to COVID-19. Most Democrats support   
   mask-wearing; most Republicans do not.9 Almost all Democrats are or plan to   
   be vaccinated; many Republicans are not vaccinated and do not plan to be.   
   In counties that Joe Biden won in the 2020 presidential election, 52.8   
   percent of people were fully vaccinated by September 2021, but in counties   
   that went to Donald Trump, the rate was 39.9 percent.10 At that time,   
   nearly half of all unvaccinated people identified as Republicans or   
   Republican-leaning. Republican confidence in science dropped during the   
   Trump administration: a 2021 Pew survey found a striking decline in   
   Republican confidence that “science has largely had a positive effect on   
   society,” from 70 percent in January 2019 to 54 percent in March 2021, with   
   no similar decline among Democrats.11   
      
   These patterns cannot be attributed to scientific illiteracy. Researchers   
   have found that scientific literacy and educational attainment do not   
   predict attitudes related to specific science controversies. In general,   
   higher education correlates with positive perceptions of science, yet   
   highly educated Republicans are more likely than less educated ones to   
      
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