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It’s not science that people are losing confidence in, it’s scientists

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Further to “Have conservatives really lost their faith in science?”: In “Faith in science?: Why skepticism is rising” (New York Post, April 2, 2012), Glenn Harlan Reynolds comments,

Consider an interesting new study by Gordon Gauchat, a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The folks at Inside Higher Ed summarized it this way: “Just over 34 percent of conservatives had confidence in science as an institution in 2010, representing a long-term decline from 48 percent in 1974, according to a paper being published today in American Sociological Review.” The report also noted that in 1974 conservatives were likelier to trust science than were liberals.

So what does that mean?

Gauchat points out, correctly, that you can’t lay the blame at the feet of biblical creationists and anti-evolutionists, who were no less common in 1974. Nor is sheer ignorance responsible, as the decline in trust rose with education. Instead, he suggests that it’s the increasing use of science as ammunition for big-government schemes that has led to more skepticism.

There’s probably something to that, but if you read the actual paper something else becomes clear. Despite the language in the coverage, it’s not science as a method that people are losing confidence in; it’s scientists and the institutions that purport to speak for them.

That is not too surprising if you consider this recent story, Peer review: Of 53 landmark publications, 47 could not be replicated. And that was about cancer, something that people tend to take seriously, for some reason.

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