Conservative people in America appear to distrust science more broadly than previously thought. Not only do they distrust science that does not correspond to their worldview, but also, compared to liberal Americans, their trust is also lower in fields that contribute to economic growth and...
phys.org
I'm not terribly surprised at some of the results but the complete distrust of
all sciences and including ones that likely create their employment.
The complete lack of intervention mechanisms is also concerning...
Sheesh, that's a really deep and interesting topic. Am
very curious how it compares across different countries and cultures.
The article says
"In America, but also in other countries, conservatives generally have lower trust in science," says one of the researchers involved, Bastiaan Rutjens.
But I'd like to know how strong that tendency is in different countries. My purely-subjective, impression is it's the case in the US because of the strong influence of religion, or at least one particular form of religion. But I wonder if the data across different countries is consistent with that impression?
There's also the question of the stage of economic development a country is at - I suspect less-developed countries, even very religious ones, would be more mad keen on science, because it's seen as a vital route to increasing wealth and living standards, and military power, while the US combines being religious with a degree of complacency about its wealth and power.
If that's the case I'd expect poorer (but religious) countries to show both extremes.
I do think that Conservatives have a tendency to go mad, that is, to adopt completely bonkers conspiracy theories, and I put that down to the fact that Conservatism as a philosophy just doesn't fit the real world, perhaps more so in our era than earlier times.
I also think some people seem to treat science as a kind of religion, a set of eternal truths direct from God, with guys in white coats regarded as a kind of priesthood. Rather than as a set of always
provisional theories, produced by a process conducted by necessarily flawed human beings and always potentially susceptible to bias.
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