“Trump Supporters Distrust Science. We Need Ways to Reach Them”

Yves here. This is the sort of article that drives me nuts. It takes an oh-so-reasonable tone while being an exercise in stereotypes. And then it defaults to the Obama formula, that every problem can be solved with better propaganda, when the issues with science (or more accurately, The Science) are not likely to be so easily remedied.

First, the Trump attacks on the funding of major universities was not mainly about gutting science. That was a by-product. It was a campaign against ideological enemies, the promoters of wokeness. These institutions are also Democratic party strongholds. The huge adminisphere and capital spending bloat, whose increase in large measure was funded by ever higher levels of student loans, has done nada to improve the caliber of teaching and research. But it has greatly increased staffing as well as pay levels (well save for the precariat grad student instructors). So over time, they became a bigger and better heeled core Team Dem cadre.

And for Trump, this was personal. How many academics wrote op eds falling trumpeting Russiagate? The between first and second term lawfare?

And remember, Trump takes glee in making things go boom and does not care about collateral damage, save when instances when checked by someone bigger than he is, like Mr. Market with the Liberation Day tariffs, or Xi with the rare earths row.

Second, Trump gave Musk and his DOGE vandals free rein. They kept messaging, with no or shoddy evidence, that there was fraud and waste everywhere. Curious how they never mentioned the corrupt money pit to rule them all of defense spending. But that drumbeat appealed not just to Trump fans but also the much larger cohort of conservatives and libertarians who hate hate hate government spend and refuse to believe that there are many cases where the programs more than pay for themselves and were completed at lower cost than the private sector could have done.

Third, the author and those who engage in similar sorts of hand-wringing refuse to acknowledge the damage that was done to science as a brand by “Trust the science” during Covid. It’s now associated with dishonest authoritarianism. And positions on it remain polarized. It seems incredible that no one can maintain that the vaccines at a population level were beneficial yet had a very fat tail in terms of serious damage to many individuals, and worse, with very little ability to anticipate who might be at pronounced risk.

This underlying fact set was made much worse by coercion to get vaxxed, on the bogus justification that they would prevent getting Covid and therefore transmission. For instance, many young women, including nurses, were vaccine averse because there were many reports of menstrual irregularity, including cessation, after getting the shots. Any young woman who thought she wanted to have kids and heard credible accounts like that would be leery. Yet even after two med school profs started collecting reports and were shocked at the response rate, the medical establishment pooh poohed there concerns rather than investigating, with patronizing remarks like, “Women often have irregular periods, particularly when they are upset.”

And there were important issues where the officialdom was too lazy and stoopid to make an effective case. Start with “Masks don’t work.” Really? Why not take an anti-masker to factory that produces toxic chemicals, and ask them not to wear a mask there. It’s trivial to dismiss the “Masks don’t work” contention, and then work through what it takes for masks to work in medical contagion setting (above all, wearing them properly and consistently, which was the real issue).

Fourth, and this overlaps with the third point, the image of science has been severely tarnished by abuses in the medical industry, and the skepticism hardened and expanded as a result of Covid orthodoxy enforcement. For instance, one was a Sandernista whose father was killed by his doctors. She ran a leading tech-heavy auto/space industry supplier, refused to get vaxxed but masked and stayed pretty isolated. Another colleague here, a Brit, has been a uni prof on two continents in technology field, and refused to take any vaccines.

There has been effectively no accountability for deaths and serious harm at the hands of knowing abusers in suits and lab coats. Were there any prominent figures in the medical or science community calling for Richard Sackler to be prosecuted and receive a multiple-lifetimes sentence? Why is killing thousands and ruining lives in the tens of thousands for profit less heinous than, say, a rape-murder? How about Vioxx? I’m sure readers can add to this hall of shame. Yet there is consternation over the Cult of Saint Luigi for his vigilante action over another device for death by profit in the medical sector?

In other words, this piece assumes that right wing hostility to “science” which seems mainly to medical science for profit, can be solved by messaging. The real problem is elite corruption and the failure of those at the top to hold bad actors and idiots in their ranks to account. And this failure to punish undeniable, welfare-wrecking abuses goes back, and includes the offensive failure to even make a serious attempt at prosecuting bank and financial firm execs after the crisis. No one was even litigated into penury. So if you can nearly destroy the world economy for fun and profit, why get fussed about a little death and injury?

When this sort of murder for money is made clear in the form of a Harry Lime in a movie, it’s easy to deplore. But how in elite organizations have been witnesses or enablers and said nothing out of inertia or fear of career cost? It’s not just the Mafia that observes the code of omerta.

In other words, the anti-science types have grievances. The fact that they may be misdirected does not make them less real.

By Paul Sutter, a cosmologist at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Rescuing Science: Restoring Trust in an Age of Doubt.” Originally published at Undark

t’s not quite burning-scientists-at-the-stake bad, but it’s close — or at least feels that way. President Donald Trump’s administration is openly waging war against universities, closing independent science review panels, funding fewer grants, and shutting down or raising concerns about the closure of important centers of government research (even though in some cases, they’re probably not supposed to). The evidence is now clear that the modern American structure of science can no longer survive as an apolitical entity that enjoys consistent, bipartisan support. Science is now suffering a generational catastrophe, not just in terms of funding, but in terms of political and public support.

Ever since World War II and the stunning success of the Manhattan Project, the United States government has poured money into universities through numerous competitive federal grant programs for the purposes of advancing basic research science. This had led to the American scientific system becoming the envy of the world, and the creation of innumerable technological marvels — not to mention significant boosts to our present-day wealth. Only large government agencies have the stomach for the kind of persistent, long-term thinking that it takes to turn fundamental research into enablers of economic prosperity.

That era is over — and the only chance for survival is to adapt. What does that mean?

In the short term, scientists and institutions will likely need to acclimate to a persistent feast-or-famine funding cycle. According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, levels of confidence in scientists among Republican voters are still far below pre-pandemic levels, despite a recent small uptick. And while Democrats in Congress seem more likely to fight to maintain research funding, GOP lawmakers have publicly expressed little interest in preserving science as a national institution even as some have raised concerns more locally.

As such, the odds that the sort of consistent, decade-over-decade support once enjoyed by American institutional science might soon be restored are vanishingly small, at least in the near term. We will see fewer big-science achievements, like the launch of fancy new telescopes, or the development of new climate-friendly technologies. And with fewer new grants being awarded, even the smaller, less splashy but crucially important incremental advances unfolding across the academic landscape will wither, as scientists everywhere scrounge for fewer available opportunities.

Researchers will also need to learn to swallow their pride and engage with Republican leadership — including Trump’s most die-hard MAGA loyalists. That won’t likely be easy, given that Republican political and popular leaders have levied several criticisms against modern science and academic institutions. They have decried, for example, the lack of conservative voices in academia; the intrusion of scientists into policy discussions; and persistently weak justificationsfor scientific endeavors, among other complaints.

Those criticisms may be tough for researchers to hear, but they are also valid. For too long, research fraud and junk science have gone unchecked. We also don’t do a great job of communicating our results to the public, and we are too often averse to exploratory risk for the sake of securing funding. As long as the scientific community ignores these very real problems, it will only work to serve the arguments of our harshest critics. There will always be those who seek to destroy science, of course. But we can effectively blunt anti-science rhetoric if we are willing to admit and address these persistent problems within the research enterprise.

Success on that front will also require scientists to radically revamp their messaging to the public — which in many cases means actually talking to the public. After all, despite creeping distrust within certain factions of the political right in recent years, most people enjoy and support science. That recent Pew Research Center poll, for example, found that 76 percent of Americans are confident that scientists do act in the best interests of the public.

That should be deeply comforting, even in these troubled times, given that it’s difficult to get three-quarters of Americans to agree on a salad dressing.

But trust in science doesn’t necessarily translate to vociferous support for funding, especially when many of those same Americans are struggling to pay their mortgages or rent. In times of economic pain, perhaps science can be viewed as an extravagance rather than a necessity. And that’s what makes the Republican retreat from science under Trump such a potent force — one that scientists everywhere will need to confront and engage with head-on, with new approaches to messaging.

Traditional arguments about financial returns, technological advancements, and unlocking the wonders of the natural universe are now ringing hollow, in large part because science doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s one facet of a wider and finite economic pie that comprises largely public funds. If scientists don’t learn to speak to the societal needs of the moment, they risk compounding losses in cultural relevancy and public support.

The good news is that new strategies within the research ranks are already being explored. We’ve known for some time that political and cultural values play a large role in support for science, and that speaking across ideological lines, rather than exclusively within them, is vital.

In past years researchers have launched pilot studies, for example, seeking new ways to effectively reach skeptics — especially around hot-button issues. One study, for example, used a video compilation of Donald Trump speaking about vaccines, and discovered that exposure to his accumulated remarks was associated with increased vaccine uptake. Earlier research has also shown that trusted messengers like evangelicals and retired members of the military can successfully shift perceptions on climate change. And the liberal think tank New America found that climate messages focused on innovation and energy reforms, rather than protecting the environment, resonated most strongly with conservatives.

All of this suggests that understanding the language, values, and trusted figures within conservative circles will be key for scientists going forward. Otherwise, the value of their work risks both public and political indifference. We can no longer assume that conservatives will blindly support science, or that they’ll come to our lectures and museums.

Instead, we have to redouble our efforts. We have to meet them where they are with a message that connects to their deeply held beliefs and values, to convince them that what we’re doing as scientists is worth it.