“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”¹

“…conservative distrust of science is collateral damage, a spillover effect of distrust in government.”²

Americans believe in science. Their nation has been a world leader in science innovations and achievements from the start. Its “founding fathers” believed in science—it was a means to human progress.³ In 2024, citizens elected an extreme right-wing government possessing an “anti-science” agenda and owning a track record of persecuting scientists. Did Americans lose their trust in science?

There is an appearance that contemporary Americans have lost their confidence in science, particularly considering the popularity of “anti-science” content on Facebook, TikTok, and “X”. Social media transmits disinformation and absurd doubts about many science related issues including the warming of the global climate, the effectiveness of vaccinations, the spherical nature of the Earth, and that human beings have visited the Moon.  Fringe beliefs of high-profile individuals spread like a wildfire. Google searches spiked when the popular rapper B.o.B. (a.k.a. Bobby Ray Simmons, Jr.) and the National Basketball Association “star” player Kyrie Irving professed beliefs in the flat-earth conspiracy (see the below figure).⁴

What celebrities say interests Americans, but why reject long-standing evidence-based thinking for a conspiratorial mentality? Perhaps many of these disbeliefs are transient like a fashion or celebrity status.  Predictors of the rejection of substantiated science topics like climate change and biological evolution can be linked to an individual’s level of scientific literacy, religious belief, and political identity.  The conspiracy-mentality is an emotional worldview that uses “viral deceptions” to undermine expertise or impugn authorities. Belief in these false claims are not merely for a lack of science knowledge; they are intentional political acts and displays of party loyalty. Republicans are more likely to reject science claims than Democrats given equal levels of scientific literacy and conspiratorial tendencies.⁵ Disregarding political party affiliation, however, Americans have a relatively high confidence in research scientists; in fact, much higher than they have of politicians.⁶

The Pew Research Center (PEW) reports that before the Covid-19 pandemic 86% of those surveyed had a “great deal” or “fair amount” confidence that scientists act in the best interest of the public.  From 2019 to 2024 this had decreased to 76% but the report also states that this is an increase from the 74% in the previous year 2023.  The public confidence in scientists is much higher than in other professions; interestingly, medical scientists were viewed more positively than business leaders. There is, however, in the PEW surveys, a noticeable split between those identifying as Democrat (D) and Republican (R).  The Republicans had higher negative views than Democrats about the personal character of scientists: “agree” that scientists are “closed minded” (R-61% to D-32%); “agree” that scientists “feel superior to others” (R-40% to D-17%).  What role should the work of scientists play in government and public policy? “Republicans/lean Republican” were nearly half as likely as “Democrats/lean Democrat” to say “scientists should take an active role in public policy debates about scientific issues” and 5 times more likely to say that scientists had too much “influence on public policy debates” (see figure below).⁷ Today Americans’ views about scientists significantly differ based on political identity, but this was not always so.

The General Social Survey (GSS) is another data source for studying the public trust in science by asking respondents about their relative confidences in various American institutions. Over the period of 1974 to 2010 the trust in science by citizens identifying by political ideology, conservative, moderate, or liberal, shows an increasing gap between liberals and conservatives (see below figure). It seems astonishing that in the early 1970s, the trust in science by conservatives and liberals was equal. According to the GSS, the gap between Republicans’ (conservative) and Democrats’ (liberal) trust in science-informed policy decisions, documented in the recent PEW report, is over four decades in the making and is entirely due to a degeneration in the former, “the growing distrust in science in the United States has been driven by a group-specific decline among conservatives [italics in the original]”.⁸ The decline of the public trust in science is a one-sided story.

Conservatives selectively mistrust science. They support “production sciences” which make new technological inventions, that benefit an industrial capitalist order, but reject “impact sciences” that research in the domains of public safety, environment and disease that have regulatory consequences.⁹ The beginning of the decline in the conservative trust in science coincides with the time of the forming of government regulatory bodies (Environmental Protection Agency-1970, United States (U.S.) Department of Health & Human Services-1980) and major environmental laws (Clean Water Act-1972; Endangered Species Act-1973). “Viral deceptions” that appeal to a “conspiratorial mentality” cause broad distrust in science, specifically when propagated by high-profile celebrities like a former “reality-tv star” and current U.S. president. These deceptions are serving a political purpose which is to scrap the sensible government guidelines that save citizens from the harmful effects of “free-market” ideology. The above predicts that the second Trump administration would act against “impact sciences”. On the first day of the Trump administration the U.S. was removed from the Paris Climate Accords, an international agreement with 196 signatories for cooperative engagement to keep the global surface temperature from rising over 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. It also predicts the new administration would favor “production sciences”; the White House announced an artificial intelligence initiative that redistributes $500 billion of public money to a few unregulated private companies. The new right-wing government will favor “production sciences” and distrust sciences that have impact or regulatory consequences. Does the average citizen want the same from science as the Trump administration? Do they want to be safe from pandemic disease and environmental calamities or see the completion of Elon Musk’s Mars fantasy?¹⁰ Unfortunately, Americans’ trust in science can be manipulated by corporate public relations firms and deliberate social media propaganda.¹¹

A final thought: Americans have a higher trust in medical scientists than in business leaders. Perhaps they will trust science to protect their health more than the political ideology that makes wealth for the few, and vote accordingly.

* The article banner image is a moment in the history of “anti-science” known as “Sharpiegate”. During the first Trump administration a hurricane prediction map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an “impact science” government agency, charged with weather forecasting, was altered to support the false personal beliefs of the president about the path of hurricane Dorian. By 18 U.S. Code 2074 it is illegal to alter government weather maps.

References

1. Arendt, H. (1958). The Origins of Totalitarianism. Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.: The World Publishing Company. p. 474. ↩︎
2. Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2022). From anti-government to anti-science: Why conservatives have turned against science. Daedalus, 151(4), 98-123. p. 101. ↩︎
3. Cohen, I. B. (1995). Science and the Founding Fathers: science in the political thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and Madison. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. ↩︎
4. Chemtrails is a conspiracy “theory” that the condensation trails of high flying aircraft are chemical or biological agents being sprayed on unsuspecting citizens for nefarious reasons. For the figure see: “America’s flat-Earth movement appears to be growing”, The Economist, Nov. 28, 2017: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/11/28/americas-flat-earth-movement-appears-to-be-growing Retrieved Jan. 20, 2025. ↩︎
5. Landrum, A. R., & Olshansky, A. (2019). The role of conspiracy mentality in denial of science and susceptibility to viral deception about science. Politics and the Life Sciences, 38(2), 193-209. ↩︎
6. Lupia, A., Allison, D. B., Jamieson, K. H., Heimberg, J., Skipper, M., & Wolf, S. M. (2024). Trends in US public confidence in science and opportunities for progress. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121 (11), e2319488121.  ↩︎
7. Tyson, A., & Kennedy, B. (2024). Public Trust in Scientists and Views on Their Role in Policymaking. https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2024/11/14/public-trust-in-scientists-and-views-on-their-role-in-policymaking/ Retrieved Jan. 20, 2025.  ↩︎
8. Gauchat, G. (2012). Politicization of science in the public sphere: A study of public trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010. American sociological review, 77(2), 167-187. p. 179.  ↩︎
9. For “impact” and “production” sciences understanding of the politicization of science see: McCright, A. M., Dentzman, K., Charters, M., & Dietz, T. (2013). The influence of political ideology on trust in science. Environmental Research Letters, 8(4), 044029.  ↩︎
10. Circulating a new joke: “Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. Let’s send him!” ↩︎
11. Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2023). The big myth: How American business taught us to loathe government and love the free market. New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Publishing USA. ↩︎