Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in science, compared with 70% when Gallup last measured it more than four decades ago. The modest decline overall obscures more significant changes among political partisans. Republicans today are much less likely than […] Read more »
Climate Change in the American Mind: 7 in 10 Americans think global warming is happening
… Americans who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it is not happening by a ratio of more than 4 to 1. Seven in ten Americans (70%) think global warming is happening. By contrast, 15% of Americans think global warming is not happening. … A majority of […] Read more »
Evidence and experts or common sense
In our hyperpolarized society, the left can’t talk to the right and the right can’t talk to the left. … Liberals and conservatives not only reach different conclusions, they arrive at them in different ways. One of the important distinctions is in who we look to for guidance. We Democrats […] Read more »
How White Evangelicals’ Vaccine Refusal Could Prolong the Pandemic
… The deeply held spiritual convictions or counterfactual arguments may vary. But across white evangelical America, reasons not to get vaccinated have spread as quickly as the virus that public health officials are hoping to overcome through herd immunity. The opposition is rooted in a mix of religious faith and […] Read more »
Trump Voters Want COVID Vaccine Information from Doctors, Not Politicians
When deciding whether to get a COVID vaccine, Republicans who voted for President Trump will be far more influenced by their doctors and family members than any politician, including Trump, according to a new national poll released today by the de Beaumont Foundation. When asked if they’d be more likely […] Read more »
How to Debunk Misinformation about COVID, Vaccines and Masks
I have spent much of my career studying ways to blunt the effects of disinformation and help the public make sense of the complexities of politics and science. When my colleagues and I probed the relation between the consumption of misinformation and the embrace, or dismissal, of protective behaviors that […] Read more »