Question Authority, But Trust Science

The results of a new Pew Research Center poll on politics and climate change surprised even some of those who study public attitudes toward science. Forty-five percent of respondents who identified as conservative Republicans said they had little or no trust in climate scientists, compared with 6 percent of self-described liberal Democrats. Only 15 percent of conservatives said they trust climate scientists “a lot.”

This is surprising, according to Daniel Kahan, a Yale professor of law and psychology, because Americans have unparalleled confidence that scientists know what they’re doing. After all, global warming and other science-related issues are complex. Most people don’t have time or training to gather their own data, he said, so they have to defer to experts.