#knowledge advancement

By: Brian Kennedy and Alec Tyson

Published: Nov 14, 2023

Among both Democrats and Republicans, trust in scientists is lower than before the pandemic

A new Pew Research Center survey finds the share of Americans who say science has had a mostly positive effect on society has fallen and there’s been a continued decline in public trust in scientists.

Key findings

Impact of science on society

Overall, 57% of Americans say science has had a mostly positive effect on society. This share is down 8 percentage points since November 2021 and down 16 points since before the start of the coronavirus outbreak.

About a third (34%) now say the impact of science on society has been equally positive as negative. A small share (8%) think science has had a mostly negative impact on society.

Trust in scientists

When it comes to the standing of scientists, 73% of U.S. adults have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests. But trust in scientists is 14 points lower than it was at the early stages of the pandemic.

The share expressing the strongest level of trust in scientists – saying they have a great deal of confidence in them – has fallen from 39% in 2020 to 23% today.

As trust in scientists has fallen, distrust has grown: Roughly a quarter of Americans (27%) now say they have not too much or no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests, up from 12% in April 2020.

Ratings of medical scientists mirror the trend seen in ratings of scientists generally. Read Chapter 1 of the report for a detailed analysis of this data.

How scientists compare with other prominent groups

The Center survey of 8,842 U.S. adults conducted Sept. 25-Oct. 1, 2023, finds that, despite recent declines in ratings, scientists and medical scientists continue to be held in high regard compared with other prominent groups in society. Smaller shares of Americans express confidence in business leaders, religious leaders, journalists and elected officials to act in the public’s best interests. As with scientists, most of these groups have seen their ratings decline in recent years.

Americans have expressed low trust in federal government and other institutions, like Congress, for decades. And political polarization – the widening gap between the views of Republicans and Democrats across a broad range of issues and attitudes – has come to be a dominant feature of American political life.

Differences between Republicans and Democrats in ratings of scientists and science

Declining levels of trust in scientists and medical scientists have been particularly pronounced among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents over the past several years. In fact, nearly four-in-ten Republicans (38%) now say they have not too much or no confidence at all in scientists to act in the public’s best interests. This share is up dramatically from the 14% of Republicans who held this view in April 2020. Much of this shift occurred during the first two years of the pandemic and has persisted in more recent surveys.

Confidence in scientists has also moved lower among Democrats. The share of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents with a great deal of confidence in scientists – which initially rose in the pandemic’s first year – now stands at 37%, down from a high of 55% in November 2020. But unlike Republicans, a large majority of Democrats (86%) continue to express at least a fair amount of confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests. The overall differences in partisan views remain much more pronounced today than they were prior to the coronavirus outbreak.

One of the starkest illustrations of polarization in views of science is the drop in the share of Republicans who view the societal impact of science positively.

Fewer than half of Republicans (47%) now say that science has had a mostly positive effect on society. In 2019, 70% of Republicans said that science has had a mostly positive effect.

A majority of Democrats (69%) continue to say science has had a mostly positive effect on society, though this share is 8 points lower than it was in 2019.

Republicans were largely critical of the country’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. For instance, large shares said too little priority was given to respecting individuals’ choices, supporting businesses and economic activity, and meeting the needs of K-12 students. In addition, many Republicans felt that public health officials’ personal views had too much influence on policy and that officials were too quick to dismiss views that challenged their scientific understanding.

Government investments in science

Despite declines in ratings of scientists and science, a large majority of Americans continue to see government investments in science as worthwhile. And most place at least some importance on the United States being a world leader in scientific achievements.

About eight-in-ten Americans (78%) say government investments in scientific research are usually worthwhile for society. Far fewer (20%) think these investments are generally not worthwhile. Large majorities across demographic and education groups see government investments in scientific research as worthwhile, as do large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans.

In addition, 52% of Americans think it is very important for the U.S. to be a world leader in scientific achievements; an additional 37% think this is somewhat important. These shares are more or less unchanged since last year.

==

Not good.

"It is the responsibility of scientists never to suppress knowledge, no matter how awkward that knowledge is, no matter how it may bother those in power; we are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible, and which are not."

"There are many hypotheses in science that are wrong. That's perfectly alright, it's the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.

The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge and there is no place for it in the endeavor of science. "

-- Carl Sagan

Note: Definition of Liberalism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, private property and a market economy.

--

1/ There's a small but vocal minority on the right which claims either:

Liberalism is wokeness, or a type of wokeness.

or

Liberalism decays into wokeness and wokeness is an inevitable result of liberalism.

Both claims are wrong and I'll explain why.

A Thread🧵

2/ How can they claim wokeness and liberalism are the same thing? There's two ways:

1. They might conflate agreement on political policy with ideological agreement.

2. They might argue liberals and wokies agree on worldview and ideology, and the differences are merely cosmetic.

3/ The first point is easy to refute: two people can agree on a policy for different reasons. A wokeist and a Libertarian may both think the Iraq war was a mistake; that doesn't mean they agree ideologically. This is obvious, it is the next argument that is far more interesting.

4/ The next argument claims that liberals and wokies really have the same goals, worldview, values and largely the same agenda. This view claims disagreements between wokies and liberals are merely surface level disagreements about how best to enact their shared vision.

5/ This is a mistake. Wokeness and liberalism are totally different worldviews. The liberal worldview says: 1. Reality is accessible by humans 2. Humans can have objectively true knowledge of reality 3. Truth is not relative 4. We can communicate truth clearly and accurately

6/ They make more claims then that, but those are the claims that we will focus on here, because the woke worldview would take issue with all four of those points because the woke world view thinks about knowledge and truth entirely differently then liberals do.

7/ The woke would say: 1. We don't have access to reality only to our expreience of reality 2. Knowledge is created with 'standpoint epistemology' where people's 'knowledge' is rooted in their identity. That is, your social identity is what allows you to know what's true or false

8/ 3. Knowledge and power are intimately connected, and the process of creating and legitimizing knowledge is a political process meant to increase and perpetuate the power of the people doing the process. 4. All truth claims are also justifications to wield power.

9/ In other words, liberals think that rigorous epistemologies (knowledge production guidelines and processes) can give us knowledge about the world that is objectively true. While these can go awry because humans are limited, over time they do give us truth about the world

10/ Wokies deny this. Wokies think what is really going on is each group wants to control the process of deciding what's true because the group that controls that process can say THEIR beliefs are the true beliefs. Whoever decides what is true in society has tremendous power...

11/ And the process of creating "truth" is really just about who gets to decide which beliefs in society are true, who gets believed, and therefore who gets the power.

Obviously these are VERY different views.

12/ So one might argue "sure, liberals and wokists disagree about science and knowledge, but they agree politically, and that's the point."

That's a step away from the original claim, but let's look at that claim for a moment because it will help set up the rest of the thread.

13/ The wokies think science and knowledge creation are political processes they want to use political legislation as a means to influence it. Liberals want the opposite. One of liberalisms highest priorities is removal of politics from science as much as possible

14/ In fact, the wokists read politics of all sorts (almost always identity politics) into everything in that happens in society. Liberals are against this. The liberals believe certain things must remain outside the political realm. Science being one such example.

15/ Clearly these are different worldviews. But this is important because it sets up the second part of our thread regarding The claim that liberalism either decay's into wokeness, or enables forces that cause the decay into wokeness.

Let's turn to that next.

16/ The claim that liberalism decays into wokeness rests on the idea that once you have liberalism, wokeness is unstoppable because liberalism has no defences against wokeness. Liberalism is "thin civilizational gruel" as @SohrabAhmari says here:

17/ The claim here, that liberalism is civilizational grues misses the point. Liberalism is not SUPPOSED to be the thing that gives your life meaning or purpose. Liberalism is a way to resolve conflict within a democratic society without resorting to guns and warfare...

18/ For example, political disputes are resolved through voting, knowledge disputes are resolved through science, value disputes are resolved through the market, and moral disputes are resolved through legislation or through freedom of association. Now, I see the rejoinder:

19/ Liberal systems have been hijacked by wokies because liberalism can't stop a group like wokies who refuse to play the liberal game and instead hijack the liberal system for woke ends. IE: Cancel Culture, getting people fired, and using the education system, to teach wokeness

20/ While it's true that systems of liberalism can be put to misuse, (an achillies heel of liberalism no doubt), I would say the only reason wokeness got a foothold was because we, the liberals, did not react to it quickly enough. It was complacency on the part of liberals....

21/ Which allowed wokeness to metastasize in the space between the academic left and the radical political protest left. This is not good and it should never have been allowed. But the fact it happened does not imply that liberalism necessarily rots into wokeness. After all...

22/ There are woke priests, woke bishops, woke rabbis and so on. Lots of religions that are not "civilizational gruel" have had large swaths accept wokeness. Given just HOW woke the catholic Church is getting, I'm surprised people think Catholicism is wholly immune to wokeness

23/ Besides, liberalism properly construed is not supposed to be civilizationally sustaining, it is supposed to allows competing claims about what is good, true, and meaningful to be resolved peacefully and fairly. That's the goal.

Now, there is one last point to deal with...

24/ It appears to be the case that some people have accepted postmodernism on the right. They have decided that Foucault was essentially correct and that given that foucault was correct, liberalism leads to wokeness because it rejects postmodernism and thus disarms itself...

25/ by refusing to use postmodern tools and postmodern weapons.

This critique is that in the age of technology where all knowledge production is de-centered, it really is a fight over who gets to decide what is true, and power is both to be used, and to be won, in that fight...

26/ I would argue that in such a scenario, the person able to develop the best technology and have the most effective results will rise in prestige in a decentralized environment. That means whoever gets closest to truth will be the winner of whatever power is available...

27/ In which case the best way to proceed is to take as much of the politics out of knowledge production as possible and have a fair method for resolving disputes. This is liberalism.

Those arguing for illiberal methods of defeating wokeness seem to have one thing in common:

28/ They have a desire to use force to just "make things right." This is wish casting, not a solution. If any of the people proposing using force to defeat the woke were capable of gathering the resources to use that force, they would have done so by now. They have not.

29/ Now, I am fully aware that my mentions will be flooded with illiberal people telling me that I just need to accept some postmodernism, or that just a little bit of authoritarianism is needed.

I decline on both counts.

30/ Finally, I have not dealt with every argument one might have made against liberalism. I am aware of this too. I dealt with the arguments that I have seen most often in my feed. I freely admit there are arguments that I have deemed to obscure to be worth dealing with here...

31/ Thanks for reading, lets defend liberalism ok people? It really is the best thing going.

/fin

==

Jonathan Rauch wrote what is often regarded as one of the most definitive - or sometimes even the definitive - books on liberalism and liberal ethics, Kindly Inquisitors.

"People turn to religion not to be informed, but to be massaged. It tells them what they want to hear, not what they need to know. Only one discipline exists to inform the human mind and to expand human knowledge, and that discipline is science."

By: Glenn Geher Ph.D.

Published: Nov 26, 2020

Academic publishing is famously brutal. You might have a great manuscript that is under review then is rejected based on comments of one anonymous reviewer who thinks that you use too many exclamation points. Or a reviewer who is bitter because you didn't cite his particular work. Or a reviewer who didn't really read the manuscript and who goes on to criticize your work for neglecting some important statistical process that you, in fact, implemented plainly and correctly.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I know, because I have published more than 100 academic pieces in my career to date. I've pretty much been through it all.

From this context, I will say that the most difficult paper that my team (the New Paltz Evolutionary Psychology Lab) and I have ever tried to publish was a paper on the topic of political motivations that underlie academic values of academics.

That paper, inspired by a visit to our campus from NYU's Jonathan Haidt, founder of the Heterodox Academy, was, a bit surprisingly to us, so controversial that it was rejected by nearly 10 different academic journals. Each rejection came with a new set of reasons. After some point, it started to seem to us that maybe academics just found this topic and our results too threatening. Maybe this paper simply was not politically correct. I cannot guarantee that this is what was going on, but I can tell you that we put a ton of time into the research and, as someone who's been around the block when it comes to publishing empirical work in the behavioral sciences, I truly believe that this research was generally well-thought-out, well-implemented, and well-presented. And it actually has something to say about the academic world that is of potential value.

I've never had a paper that was so difficult to publish. Not even close.

A few months ago, I participated in a colloquium hosted by the Institute for Humane Studies. In our discussion, I brought this paper up to see if anyone had any ideas on a good forum for publishing it. There, renowned psychologist Clay Routledge of North Dakota State University suggested something pretty simple: How about just publish it yourself and post it on your blog?

Honestly, this suggestion seemed kind of genius to me. After all, I don't need more publications for any extrinsic reason at all. I've held tenure since 2004. Further, I know full well that my Psychology Today blog posts receive way more views than do my academic articles. And I know that, in fact, many of these views come from academics themselves.

Consider this post exactly what Clay suggested. Here, after years of efforts from our team to publish a study of political values among academics, is, in full, that paper, titled as such: Politics and Academic Values in Higher Education: Just How Much Does Political Orientation Drive the Values of the Ivory Tower?

Ironically, this paper, now easily self-published thanks to the magic of cloud technology, officially should be cited as an unpublished manuscript. This said, the full APA citation is found in the references below and it is perfectly appropriate to cite in academic papers (the fact that it is "unpublished" clearly lets the reader know that it did not pass the process of peer review, for whatever reason; I figure people can do whatever they want with that information).

The Story of the Paper

As alluded to above, this paper has something of a saga behind it. I provide the short version here.

In 2016, our campus at the State University of New York, like so many campuses around the world at the time, was abuzz with issues surrounding academic freedom and free speech. Through a series of fast-moving events, in fact, we had an instance of a self-declared conservative speaker (Cliff Kincaid) become dis-invited from campus. He was then re-invited. But the whole thing was clunky and kind of uncomfortable, to put it simply.

I was asked to head a Free Speech Task Force on campus at the time to help our community work through, in a truly collaborative fashion, some of the issues that surrounded these controversies. We were charged with organizing events.

Our committee decided to invite Jonathan Haidt to come give a public lecture on our campus. That talk (streamed here) addressed the fundamental conflict between academic and political values, suggesting that if academia is to be an institution that seeks truth, it cannot concurrently be an institution that has a political agenda, primarily for the reason that a political agenda may come to taint efforts to arrive at truth.

The event was standing-room only. I personally thought the talk was great and was highly thought-provoking and important. Members of my research team and the Free Speech Task Force generally seemed to agree. Interestingly, many people in our academic community were outraged by the talk. I was genuinely surprised by this fact. I felt like I learned a lot and was provided new intellectual tools for understanding the nature of academia.

Yet many people in our community reported that they felt the talk was offensive and even inappropriate. They reported that he was not being politically correct and that he promoted an anti-social-justice-based approach to higher education. Note that this talk took place less than two months before the 2016 presidential election, and it was a tense time on college campuses for sure.

After the talk, in my capacity as chair of the Free Speech Taskforce, I was asked by multiple people to organize a follow-up event for members of our community to discuss Haidt's talk and process it together. In all my years, I'd never heard of such a request—a fact that speaks volumes about the truly controversial nature of this event. There was even some minor vandalism connected with the event that took place, as a large, high-quality poster advertising the event was (after the event was over) taken down and shoved behind a desk in the main Psychology Department office. People were genuinely angry. Again, I was surprised. I thought that most of Dr. Haidt's points made sense. It was a strange situation to be in.

The Study

My research team meets every Friday afternoon and so, of course, the Friday after Haidt's presentation, we really couldn't focus on anything else! Being relatively proactive, our team quickly started to think about a study that could help shed light on the situation. We were interested in understanding the degree to which various factors related to political motivations might underlie academic values among academics, as Haidt had suggested in his presentation.

Haidt specifically talked about the degree to which academics differentially value knowledge advancement versus social justice as core values in the academy. We designed a study with academics in mind. In short, we surveyed nearly 200 academics from around the US and asked them to rate the degree to which they prioritize each of the five following academic values:

Academic rigor

Knowledge advancement

Academic freedom

Students' emotional well-being

Social Justice

We asked these professors to report on their gender, political orientation, basic personality traits, and field of academic study. And just as Haidt's presentation suggested, several of these variables were strongly and significantly related to the values that one holds as an academic.

Our full report of these findings is found in our (now published) "unpublished manuscript," here.

Some highlights of the findings are as follows:

Relatively conservative professors valued academic rigor and knowledge advancement more than did relatively liberal professors.

Relatively liberal professors valued social justice and student emotional well-being more so than did relatively conservative professors.

Professors identifying as female also tended to place relative emphasis on social justice and emotional well-being (relative to professors who identified as male).

Business professors placed relative emphasis on knowledge advancement and academic rigor while Education professors placed relative emphasis on social justice and student emotional well-being.

Regardless of these other factors, relatively agreeable professors tend to place higher emphasis on social justice and emotional well-being of students.

Our Discussion focuses largely on how these data are consistent with a highly politicized portrait of academia; one in which political orientation, biological sex, personality, and field of study importantly shape the values held by professors in the modern landscape of higher education. Implications for better understanding academia are discussed.  

Of course, we see great irony in the fact that a paper about the politicization of academia might have been seen as too politically incorrect to actually publish in an academic journal!

Bottom Line

Academic publishing is famously difficult. This post was designed to shed light on the highly politicized nature of this process. In all my years within the academy, I've never had so much difficulty trying to publish an article. Hopefully, our effort to self-publish the paper here, allows our findings to reach a broad audience. And hopefully, this effort on our part helps shed important light on the nature of politics within the academy.

As is true with any field, academia has its politics. I'd say that research designed to help understand the nature of the politics in the academy has the capacity to help us best understand higher education in our modern world. And I think that's a good thing.

Paper: Politics and Academic Values in Higher Education:Just How Much Does Political Orientation Drive the Values of the Ivory Tower?

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