Chakaia Booker, Acid Rain, 2001, rubber tires and wood, overall: 120 x 240 x 36 inches; each armature (3 total): 80 x 48 x 1 inches; tire pallet (12 total): 22 x 48 x 40 inches. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Museum purchase: Members’ Acquisition Fund © Chakaia Booker. Photo by Lee Stalsworth.

Events

How Did Science Become So Polarizing?

For most of the past half century, Americans of both parties expressed high levels of trust in science, coinciding with bipartisan support for investment in scientific research. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, however, that dynamic has shifted, with Republicans reporting declining trust even while Democrats planted lawn signs reading “In this house we believe in science.” 

“Over the past decade, trust in science has emerged as a central dividing line in our society, fueling a strange new politics of science,” M. Anthony Mills and Price St. Clair write in a recent article. Join us for a conversation about how science has become such a polarizing subject in American life, and what that means for such diverse issues as public health and science funding. What can the scientific enterprise do to rebuild trust across the political spectrum?

Panelists

  • Cary Funk, senior advisor, Aspen Institute Science & Society Program.
  • Emily Garner, senior analyst, Lake Research Partners.
  • M. Anthony Mills, senior fellow and director of the Center for Technology, Science, and Energy, American Enterprise Institute.
  • Tobin Smith, senior vice president for government relations & public policy, Association of American Universities.
  • Torie Bosch (moderator), first opinion editor, STAT News.

Watch the Recording

Chat Transcript

This transcript has been edited. Please also note that the opinions and perspectives of commenters, writers, interviewees and guests do not represent an official statement, policy or perspective from Arizona State University.

Kimberly Quach: Welcome everyone! We’ll get started in a few minutes. While we wait, check out:

Joseph Graves Jr: I have a hard time with the claim that those common explanations “fail”; unless the speaker means that these explanations fail to explain all lack of trust in science.  Clearly for some groups the explanations are correct, so the real question is exactly what are the percentages within the population that those explanations do refer to, and also what additional explanations have not been fully explored and to what demographics those explanations explain.

John Eldon: Our second president saw this coming back in 1797: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” We absolutely need to get rid of closed primaries.

Having said that, I also agree with the urban-rural divide comment.

Rene von Schomberg: We just finalised a one year mutual learning exercise among 16 European States on Science4Policy ecosystems. We made a clear distinction between Trust in Science and trust in science for policy. The latter has to be credible, responsive to public values and have anticipatory capacity (lacking with Covid) to be trustworthy, see OA report

David Goldston: I think that there wasn’t such a link between institution attitudes and attitudes toward science until recently.  And indeed they weren’t generally connected in Cong’l rhetoric until the last year or two.

Richard Williams: The conversation so far seems to be talking about the public, how educated they are or what political party they are in.  There also seems to be a change in parts of the scientific community where research seems to be pointed at findings that are predetermined to be on one side or the other.  We certainly see that in some major journals like Scientific American.  Increasingly, some scientists want to play in the political fields which detracts from real science.

Kimberly Quach: Thanks Rene! On the COVID point, Tony has written a recent article about the need to reckon with what happened during that era.

Joseph Graves Jr:  I am also concerned how so far, this conversation has not discussed socially defined race; the last election was driven more by that variable than by any other.  In addition discussions of trust/distrust in science should always be reported relative to subpopulations.  Are there differences by socially defined race, gender, sexual orientation.  Work we have done, shows this is certainly true for socially defined race: 12. Bailey, G.L, Han, J, Wright, D.C, and Graves, JL., Religiously Expressed Fatalism and the Perceived Need for Science and Scientific Process to Empower Agency, Science in Society, 2(3): 55-88, 2011.

Anjuli Bamzai:  If our educational system had been developing a scientific temper in society, so to speak…would we be in the conundrum we are in?? A rhetorical question, nevertheless I’d be interested in what our esteemed panelists think.

David Goldston: There’s no question that COVID was a watershed.  But it was a watershed because of the way the social and political context had changed, and then COVID helped cement and institutionalize those changes.  In a different era, the same COVID fights would not have had the same far-reaching results.

Lucas Held: Re Anthony Mills point re trust in institutions: The recent special issue of Daedalus, and in particular the lead piece by Henry Brady, makes it clear that trust in institutions is polarized by the KIND of institutions. Republicans have more trust in law enforcement and lower in knowledge-producing institutions.  Here is the article.

John Eldon: We need a system that enables moderates and mavericks of both parties to survive the primaries and even reach the runoffs. Otherwise we keep getting stuck with lesser of two evils. Open primaries can help.

Julie Claussen: Is it more basic – that scientists have done a terrible job communicating what they do and why it is important to the broader public.  How many times have we had to justify why tax paying dollars are going toward a certain study.  If you don’t understand the relevancy – it doesn’t matter what party you belong to.

John Nelson: @Richard Williams, Scientific American isn’t a scientific journal. It’s a popular magazine about science.

Not to say there are no problems in science proper, but your comment also illustrates that “science” usually reaches members of the public through various intermediaries, from doctors to politicians to journalists to Instagram influencers.

Richard Williams: I have seen the same sort of bias at times in Lancet and Science.

Aleta Meyer: The executive order that came out Friday, to return to a Golden Standard of Science, seems like something to wrestle with in this conversation.

Kathryn Asalone: Additionally, the field has been trying to move away from this rhetoric that the public has to trust science and move towards the fact that the scientific field needs to be trustworthy! There are valid historical and current reasons that there is a lack of trustworthiness of scientific institutions and scientists and we need to acknowledge those harms and not put the onus on the communities.

Claudia Fracchiolla: We – scientists – have failed to communicate on the process of science. We don’t talk enough about the failures that lead to the discovery.

Lucas Held:   +1 to Tobin Smith: “Following the science” is an oversimplification — the question was how to reconcile the science on public health with the science in public education. That’s a value judgment.

Joseph Graves Jr: Actually, you are wrong on that point.  There are some cases in which the scientific results are so clear, that only a few policy decisions can result.  The problem now is that you have an administration that routinely ignores the science, so that they run their policies that are in complete opposition to scientific facts; e.g. gender fluidity – humans are not just male and female; race realism, humans do not have biological races.

Richard Williams: Scientists also need to be more clear about what they know and what they don’t know, uncertainty.

Bethany Johns: The discussion reminds of Douglas North’s work, a Nobel Prize winning economist, on Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance.  Excellent, thought provoking work for public policy makers.

Julie Claussen: Covid was the result of not trusting science – not the cause…

John Alic:  Yes, of course you have to listen. How many scientists—and I’ve known hundreds—even try to listen, much less have learned how to do it as effectively, as say a good journalist?

D Rozell: Emily made a great point – a lot of science distrust seems to be about distrust in “elites” rather than the body of scientific knowledge. Of course, some distrust in particular science is a matter of personal convenience. This has been a long standing problem. Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

David Goldston: All sides of debates tend to say “the science made me do it,” even though that’s never actually the case.  RFK, Jr. and his gang claim they have more reliable science, not that science doesn’t matter.

Glenn Branch: A worry I have about the article, and a lot of today’s discussion so far, is its reliance on abstract and decontextualized survey instruments, such as the GSS’s. These in effect presuppose that the American public has a coherent attitude toward the scientific community as such, which seems unlikely: after all, surveys routinely find that most Americans can’t name a living scientist. So these instruments may be measuring not confidence in the scientific community alone but also the perceived salience of science — people who just aren’t that interested in science will tend to shy away from the extremes presented (“a great deal of confidence” and “hardly any confidence at all” in the GSS). None of this is to deny that there isn’t increasing political polarization of science, but it would be good to have more concrete and contextualized survey instruments to generate data on confidence in science to measure it.

Rhonda Moore: Agree, Lucas. There are very complex public policy decisions where following the science oversimplifies the many considerations that inform a decision. And these complicated decisions do boil down to value judgements. There is, also, a limitation in how we educate scientists in that a) we aren’t candid or honest about the values embedded in the human-made scientific process thereby purporting the idea that scientific evidence is superior to other inputs in policy and b) that science is a human-made process and it is itself value-rich.

David Goldston: This is all sounding very abstract at a time when the future existence of universities in the U.S. is at stake.

Anjuli Bamzai: +1 David G.

Julie Claussen: Understanding elitism in science is key = if I sound really smart and show my complex graphs and talk in jargon, I will be seen as an expert and then people should automatically accept what I say.

Lalit Merani: Usually college educated folks live in 15% of electoral districts, scientific systems are in opposition to political proclivities. Balanced policy is the consequent victim.

Kimberly Quach: “How we beat anti-vaccination bills in North Dakota” by Josh Gryniewicz and Sandy Tibke

Lisa Hansen: Scientists also need to be incentivized and rewarded for community engagement and broader science communication

Marie Coppola: Agreed, Toby, about the need to train scientists to communicate their findings more broadly. Funding agencies need to allow/encourage funds to be devoted to that or it will not happen, regardless of the good intentions of the researcher. (Lisa, you beat me to it!)

John Alic:  Earlier examples of questioning of science include Cold War disputes over nuclear war-rellalted issues—e.g., Edward Teller vs., say, Hans Bethe, and the 1958-mid1960s PCAST.

Glenn Branch:  The NPR story and the underlying study.

M R: Reading the recently released “Empire of AI” – I foresee that all of the training of LLMs on available public and private research will be funneled towards isolating the research market to conduct solely PRIVATIZED research instead of at universities… or anywhere else. Already happening in the field of AI!, This is already occurring.

It’s the profit motive that underlies our society again poisoning the drive of study… hence the value of Creative Commons, public studies, etc. We unfortunately live in a tech oligarchy, not a democracy. The effects of Cambridge Analytica continue – there are many bad actors operating on our decimated media. Science IS political, decisions on what to study or fund or what data to collect or share, etc. Until we have our own collective internet with more privacy measures, I anticipate the problem to worsen.

Lucas Held:   +1 to Marie and Anthony – “scientists need to be able to communicate the value of their research to those outside of the scientific community.” One limitation: Gaining attention for anything is a HUGE challenge.

David Goldston:  The public needs more of a better background on civics and governance than they do on science.

Claudia Fracchiolla:  The point that Emily brought about the problem with communication and connection with trust is discussed in this recent study by ASTC.

Lucas Held:   Never very persuasive? But didn’t Vannevar Bush’s “Endless Frontier” help power decades of scientific investment?

David Goldston:  I don’t think Cary’s polling backs up what Tony is saying about basic science, neither does the history of science funding.

Lalit Merani:  Most STEM scientists have limited liberal arts education and even less communication skills and hence the scientific community finds itself adrift of the less educated dominated 85% electoral districts.

Hulya Demirdirek:  Communication problems are a small part of the problem. There is a large section of population which would not accept the logical argument. It is not about explaining it well! Persuasion and successful communication are not the same things.

Kathie Wrick: We cannot rely on the public to educate themselves further on science.  It is our responsibility as scientists to figure out how to meet them where they are and communicate (and educate) them.  Science Communications is a field unto itself that we basic scientists must give their due, and our respect.

Sarah Rovito: Very related to public trust in science – I invite everyone to attend National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt’s second State of the Science address, taking place on Tuesday, June 3 at 3pm ET. You can watch in person or online:

John Nelson: Question’s sort of a tautology, no? Of course more people would trust science if more people were educated in (i.e., brought up in, acculturated into) science. More people would trust Christian scripture if most people were heavily acculturated in Christian theology, people would like hockey better if everyone were brought up playing hockey, etc.

Joseph Graves Jr:  The idea that civics and governance versus science knowledge is wrong headed.  Our society must do better on education period.  The program to destroy public education has resulted in these issues: lack of understanding of government, science, math, history, sociology, and critical thinking in general.

Lucas Held:   Hulya, fascinating comment – can you explain communication vs. persuasion. Are you distinguishing between understanding and persuasion?

Rhonda Moore: Agree with Lisa and others that scientists need better comms training, and to be incentivized to communicate with folks who don’t have their same training/background. I think the importance of developing and nurturing those civic relationships is also important. To Anthony’s point and others, everyone is overwhelmed with information. We search out what is useful and interesting to us, and we consume what we think we understand.

Rhonda Moore:  Agree, persuasion and communication are not the same thing. Communication can just be about sharing information. Persuasion seeks to inform or bring about a change in behaviour or thinking.

Lalit Merani:  Social media and diversity of media sources has destroyed attention span and there is no area of human endeavor outside of scientific enquiry that needs great span of attention.

Claudia Fracchiolla:  I actually think that all scientists should be trained in how to communicate science to diverse audiences- it is in part our responsibility. That also leaves space for science communicators. But we need to engage with our communities and know how to talk to the communities we serve

Hulya Demirdirek:  Lucas, yes, I do. Thank for being open to thinking about it. Ideological divides influence how people understand the message.

John Alic:  Studs Terkel knew how to listen. Know any scientists who actually listen? Nor all that many physicians.

David Goldston: Having a higher level of education actually doesn’t necessarily translate into greater trust in science.

John Nelson: The idea that scientists need to communicate better can still be articulated in a sort of supply-push way. We need to take seriously the idea that “listening” on the part of science means being open to actually shifting goals, programs of research, etc.

Lucas Held:  Thanks, Hulya – yes, agree. Priors — whether beliefs, understanding, ideology — play a huge role in how people hear a message. And what I’m hearing is that we need to reaffirm that effective communication is two-way — an exchange rather than a one-way transaction.

Bevin Wathen: This lotus is wide.

Courtney Stadd: I very much respect the urgency of this conversation and the perspectives of the panelists. The discussion regarding messaging and listening are appreciated but I sense you all are using a pea shooter vs. the huge weapon arsenal deployed the Administration and its allies.  I wonder if the science community needs to enlist major foundation funding sources (understand one must avoid conflict of interests) that can allow the community to deploy an intensive nationwide campaign that can use all tools from social media to streaming to grab the public’s attention, including showing videos, etc. that dramatically show a world without the contributions from the full range of science R&D, including some of the best voices from the community. Also town listening meetings – virtual and in-person.  It seems this needs an all hands on deck – messaging, listening, etc.

David Goldston:  These are important and useful suggestions for some smaller-bore (if still significant) fights.  They won’t affect the overall polarization of American society or the huge policy fights right now.

Dan Berglund:  Scientists are more trusted than politicians.

M R: There’s a threatening overarching profit motive to privatize -for monopolies on data and information to perpetuate – there’s a profit motive to defund public institutions. We cannot only aim to persuade the general public on social media platforms that are owned by ppl who want to continue consolidating eternally. We need to begin with a better “group chat”. (Talking locally and in person is great !!)

John Nelson: Scientists are more trusted than politicians as a category in general social surveys, but the real question is particular politicians or particular scientists (or science communicators). RFK vs. Fauci, Bill Nye vs. your Congressional representative, etc.

Lucas Held:  Courtney, yes, asymmetry of voice is a huge issue. If people hear one side and not the other there is a huge asymmetry.

Robert Frederick:  Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t convey much humility or restraint.

Kathie Wrick: WE have not brought up the important role of the Media in  shaping the public’s attitudes… a seminar unto itself.  Many in the media try to turn ‘recent studies” into headlines so their byline gets more attention…not the accurate interpretation of what they report.

Dan Berglund:   I’d like to see a RFK Jr vs Fauci poll. I’m not sure where that would come down.

Trent True: What concrete steps can be taken by the scientific community to rebuild confidence across the political spectrum, ensuring that scientific advancements and public health recommendations are viewed as a shared societal good, rather than a partisan issue, and what role do policymakers and the public themselves play in this critical effort?

Anjuli Bamzai:  Why are we binning into these categories: a scientist can choose to run for election. Or become OSTP Director, or serve on PCAST.

Julie Claussen: I run science communication training programs, and it is challenging to get many scientists to accept new approaches, practice new skills, and then actually use them.

Rhonda Moore: I do, too, Julie and I agree with you 100%.

Hannah Frank: This is a much bigger topic: but it seems funny to me that we do research with tax dollars and then use tax dollars to pay for publishing our results in outlets that most people can’t access. What if we made our results the public good that they should be?

Glenn Branch: @Dan Berglund: Behold: polling on Fauci vs. RFK Jr.

John Nelson: @Hannah Frank this is one of the motivations behind the open access push from the last admin, which has not totally been axed under the current one.

Rhonda Moore: I have started hosting conversations about why communication to diverse audiences is important and what those conversations can lead to; i find that a more successful way of demonstrating the value of growing one’s communication skills and active listening skills.

John Alic: I tend to see science as one target among many, with higher education another. The overall goal going back decades now is a subservient population, beaten down legally & dumbed down—persuaded that government just doesn’t. Such a populace will then be more easily guided/ruled/dominated by an ascendent ruling class.

Rodney Sobin:  agree on need for better communications by scientists but also limits to such direct communications; We need better science communication with (1) those trusted in community: doctors, pharmacists, weather broadcasters, teachers and (2) with policymakers – eg AAAS fellows in congress but others and state legislatures

Janet Hering: What about science journalists?  The loss of expertise in science journalism would seem to be part of the problem.

Richard Williams:  I couldn’t agree more with this, don’t endorse a party or a politician if you want to be trusted as a scientist.

Lucas Held: To Anthony’s point, Nature had a fascinating study on the impact of the journal’s endorsement of Biden: … in short, the journal lost trust among Trump voters.

James Bottorff: Does Fox News have a Science section?

Hulya Demirdirek:  Fair enough Julie but there will always be “translators” of scientific knowledge. As Emily said, is not the primary skill for scientists. There is enough pressure on scientists to be “sexy”.

Megan Nicholson:  from the New Yorker, on changing patters of trust in expertise

Jerome Ravetz: It might provide perspective to have a look at the opening scene of the play ‘The Clouds’ by Aristophanes.

Claudia Fracchiolla: Trust in scientists and their role in society across 68 countries

Wendy Fink:  If you are looking for communications training for scientists, you could look at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. While I would agree that most folks don’t get their science info directly from scientists, learning how to communicate your science in a way that the general public can understand it can be beneficial to scientists themselves (laying out broader impacts, advocacy, talking with relatives at holidays, etc.).

Karen Johnson: I absolutely agree with Emily Garner… scientists being able to explain their science to those who are not scientists.

Rhonda Moore: Agree with Rodney and Janet

John Nelson: It should be noted that scientists have never really been great at communicating their findings. What has changed is that they used to work in institutions which most people trusted, which communicated on their behalf.

Joseph Graves Jr: I wasn’t taught science as facts in my high school…I was taught to think critically about nature, so clearly there are counter examples.

Claudia Fracchiolla:   At APS there is a program that teaches science to engage in difficult conversations – which the core of it is centered around intellectual humility and listening reflective

John Alic: The guru on uncertainty was John Ziman. See what he wrote years ago on  “reliable knowledge.”

Hallie Thompson: A very relevant series from the Institute for Science & Policy out of Denver, CO.

Rene von Schomberg: Some attention should be given to knowledge brokers, independent bodies which can identify broad scientific consensus as well as dissent, uncertainty and relate them to disputed policy objectives

Anjuli Bamzai: There is science and there’s scientific temper. I’m afraid we’ve neglected the importance of the latter.

Lucas Held:   +1 to Tobin’s point: “we don’t do a good job of talking about science as a process,” because without it, as Emily says “people feel tricked” when our knowledge changes.

Hannah Frank: Would encourage everyone here to start communicating their science to their own community through this initiative.

Dan Berglund:  Toby’s point is interesting. My science education in the 1970s was very much about the scientific process as the underlying core. I wonder if that has changed over the last 50 years.

John Eldon: I really like the comments about how science evolves over time — John Q Public does not understand this.

M R:  How can scientists fight back against the deployment of artificial intelligence to increase public distrust (towards the end goal of privatizing research) defund institutions and privatize research? The current distrust in science already occurred in journalism— there is a through line here – ai can’t yet replicate labor but it can be used as a negotiation tool to devalue the labor and expertise of scientists

Joseph Graves Jr:  At present trends this society will not last 50 years.

Julie Claussen: Does anyone else feel that appreciation for science (and how it is done) it has to be instilled at a young age?

Hulya Demirdirek: Now we have the new challenge of maintaining trust in knowledge and information in the presence of unequal reach and skills about AI! And different intentions of using it.

Janet Hering: AI and algorithms need to be REGULATED.  The EU is way ahead of the US on this.

Trent True:  This is a great discussion of how science and its touchpoints are getting impacted in the larger “Trust Recession” era.

Kimberly Quach: Thank you all for joining us and for all your thoughts and resources. Continue the conversation by joining our LinkedIn group!

Stay up-to-date on the latest news and events from Issues by signing up for our free digital newsletter!