If it seems as if, with increasing frequency and intensity, American conservatives are hostile towards science — climate change, evolution, medical research, etc. — it’s not your imagination.
This chart, as part of a study from Gordon Gauchat, made the rounds yesterday, and with good reason. It shows the trend over the last four decades of Americans’ trust in science, as broken down by political ideology. The results are hard to miss: conservatives’ trust in science is in sharp decline.
It seemed plausible to me that education levels may account for some of this, but that’s not the case — Gauchat’s research found the same trend among conservatives regardless of their last completed degree. Indeed, it’s counterintuitive, but when it comes to valuing science, conservatives with college degrees “decline more quickly than those with only a high school degree.”
Kevin Drum had a good take on this.









