Trust in Science Has Also Declined Among People Who Frequently Attend Church
While trust in science remained stable among people who
self-identified as moderates and liberals in the United States between
1974 and 2010, trust in science fell among self-identified conservatives
by more than 25 percent during the same period, according to new
research from Gordon Gauchat, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services
Research.
“You can see this distrust in science among conservatives reflected
in the current Republican primary campaign,” said Gauchat, whose study
appears in the April issue of the American Sociological Review.
“When people want to define themselves as conservatives relative to
moderates and liberals, you often hear them raising questions about the
validity of global warming and evolution and talking about how
‘intellectual elites’ and scientists don’t necessarily have the whole
truth.”
Relying on data from the 1974-2010 waves of the nationally
representative General Social Survey, the study found that people who
self-identified as conservatives began the period with the highest trust
in science, relative to self-identified moderates and liberals, and
ended the period with the lowest.
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