US public’s trust in science shows growing partisan gap

The latest survey of Americans' views of science and scientists was released on Tuesday. The public's opinion of scientists has dropped since the peak of the Pandemic in 2020. The situation is more complicated when the numbers are looked at closely.

In the case of scientists, there was a return to pre-pandemic popularity as a result of the drop in trust. The exception is that most people don't think that scientists should be involved in policy decisions.

The good news

The surveys have been done for a long time and should show trends in the data. Scientists are one of the most respected groups in the US and the results have generally been positive.

With the latest polling, nothing has changed. Eighty percent of the participants said they had a "great deal" or "fair amount" of confidence in the medical scientists, who were the most highly rated. The military and scientists were tied for second place. The other groups were below 70 percent.

Strong support for science can be traced back to that trust. More than 80 percent of the participants said research is worthwhile for society, and a similar number said it was important for the US to be a leader in science. There is a lot of support for the scientific endeavor and the people who are involved in it.

Those negatives...

A survey done in 2020 shows that trust in scientists peaked in the early days of the Pandemic, when only 12 percent of the public said they didn't trust scientists. In the previous survey, 22 percent of people said they lacked trust in scientists, but by the year 2021, it had doubled to 22 percent.

There are some pieces of context there. This is the same level of distrust that we saw in 2016 In the previous survey, only 21 percent of the public said they had a good amount of trust in scientists. Since 2020, trust seems to have fallen across the board. There was a rise in the number of people distrusting the military. The police, religious figures, school administrators, and business leaders all have the same thing in common.