Since COVID started, many people started to lose confidence in medical science due to the number of people dying because of the slow progress in finding a vaccination. Overall, 39% of U.S. adults said they had “a great deal of confidence” in the scientific community, down from 48% in 2018 and 2021. Around half of the adults in the nation reported “some confidence” and 13% of adults reported “hardly any confidence” according to a survey conducted by NORC.
When the pandemic started, trust in science began to diverge along political lines:
democrats reported a growing level of confidence in science in 2021 while the Republicans saw their confidence plunge drastically. In the 2022 survey, Democrats’ confidence fell back to around pre-pandemic levels, with 53% reporting a great deal of confidence compared with 55% in 2018. But Republicans’ confidence continued its downward trend, dropping to 22% from 45% in 2018. In 2018, Democrats and Republicans were about equally likely to say they had high confidence. By 2022, though, Republicans’ confidence had fallen to 26%, while Democrats’ had remained about the same as it was before the pandemic, at 42%.
Many people are against this way of thinking that belief in political parties will help in any way. Parikh, CEO of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, states, “The causes of Alzheimer’s are the same whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. The fusion that goes on in the sun is the same whether you live in Topeka or you live in San Francisco.”
When the pandemic started, trust in science began to diverge along political lines:
democrats reported a growing level of confidence in science in 2021 while the Republicans saw their confidence plunge drastically. In the 2022 survey, Democrats’ confidence fell back to around pre-pandemic levels, with 53% reporting a great deal of confidence compared with 55% in 2018. But Republicans’ confidence continued its downward trend, dropping to 22% from 45% in 2018. In 2018, Democrats and Republicans were about equally likely to say they had high confidence. By 2022, though, Republicans’ confidence had fallen to 26%, while Democrats’ had remained about the same as it was before the pandemic, at 42%.
Many people are against this way of thinking that belief in political parties will help in any way. Parikh, CEO of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science, states, “The causes of Alzheimer’s are the same whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat. The fusion that goes on in the sun is the same whether you live in Topeka or you live in San Francisco.”
