Biased Political Attitudes Toward Science

Last August, the Pew Research Center wrote “Democrats and Republicans differ over role and value of scientists in policy debates.” Pew polling shows what is by now a predictable divide in attitudes toward science. Overall, about 60% of Americans believe that when science is relevant, scientists with relevant expertise should have a role in policy debates. That said, party-based differences are major.

For example, 54% of Democrats say policy choices from scientific experts are usually better than other people’s, while 66% of Republicans believe the experts are the same or worse than choices of average people.

Other Pew data suggest that for issues grounded in matters of science, there is significant distrust of scientists and/or science itself.

This polling seems to imply that people who see bias among scientists leads them to question or distrust the logic that scientists use. Flawed logic definitely can lead people to draw false conclusions from data. However, all people are open to bias. That includes people who distrust scientists due to their own anti-science biases. People are biased but nonetheless they still can be guided by facts and logic more than what their bias alone would lead them to believe.

Arguably, anti-science bias is the basis that some people rely on to reject consensus data-based science beliefs such as climate change or the urgency of the climate problem.