Nick Robertson and The Hill
21 minutes ago
(The Hill) – Americans’ trust in science is declining as the political divisions created by the coronavirus pandemic continue, a new national survey finds.
A public survey by the University of Chicago’s NORC (National Center for Public Opinion Research) found that 39% of Americans said they were “very” confident in science, down from 48% in 2018 and 2021.
The survey found a low level of trust in science among Republicans, and a continuation of partisan rifts that began during the coronavirus pandemic. After the pandemic began, Republicans lost faith in science and Democrats showed more faith, as prominent politicians from each party questioned and asserted the government’s claims about viruses and vaccines, respectively.
“If you just look at the trends in the population as a whole, it doesn’t look that dramatic,” said Jennifer Benz, deputy director of NORC. told the Associated Press. “But if you dig it down by party affiliation, you can see that there is really a clear recession and polarization.”
Trust in science among Democrats has returned to pre-pandemic levels in the 2022 survey, with about 53% of respondents feeling “very” confident. But Republican confidence continued to decline, reaching a record low of 22%, down from 45% in 2018, indicating a “fair” confidence.
“Science has to be bipartisan,” Sudip Palik, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told The Associated Press. “The cause of Alzheimer’s is the same whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. The fusion that happens under the sun is the same whether you live in Topeka or San Francisco.”
Prominent Republican politicians continue to question the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine and criticize lockdown measures taken during the pandemic. A 2021 Kaiser study found that people who were not vaccinated against the novel coronavirus Three times more likely to lean Republican than the Democratic Party.
The latest version of the General Social Survey, released last month, was conducted on 3,544 American adults between May 5 and December 20, 2022. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points. The survey, which asks Americans about a wide range of subjects, has been conducted since 1972.
