The public should trust science. He spoke at the History Museum in los angeles at an event hosted by the public square. This is just over one hour. Now it is my great pleasure to introduce tonights moderator, an awardwinning science journalist reporting on the diseased state of the world oceans earned her both a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting and the award for public understanding of science. She regularly contributes Opinion Pieces for the Los Angeles Times as a Senior Editor and writer at the huffington. Please give a warm welcome. [applause] thank you. Its great to see such a robust crowd and energetic crowd. Ive been a fan since its inception. Its actually my anniversary ten years ago i moderated my first panel on Climate Change so im thrilled to be back and with this wonderful panel i would like to introduce eric conway, historian of science and okchnology and the coauthor ofa a book merchants about how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. Next to terry funk joining us from watching nbc. Shes the director of science and Society Research at the Pew Research Center and is also offered numerous reports focused on the public trust in science including views ranging from energy and climate to vaccines anvaccines andediting and last t we have jeff from ucla sociologist Whose Research integrates how life works. He studies why people care about what they care about and how the concern relates to issues of science and religion. Im going to jump right in. We are gathered here during the week of the anniversary of one of humankinds greatest celebrated scientific achievements you really cant escape it thiss week. The apollo moon landing. Just got this important issue of whether and why americans are turning against science, so i would like to start with asking is this a new phenomenon or something that has long been nsth us . Has americas relationship with science been changing over time . I would like to ask eric to start. I asked for this question because one of the things people seem to think this idea that americans are turning against science is kindng of new but the have been surveys done for decades and one study found 2012 dug into this idea of whether this is a new idea using a General SocialScience Survey data from 74 to 2012 and one of the things he found his back in 1974 the people were most skeptical of science and the people who have the least trust in it defined themselves as political moderates which opened up my eyes because then im like that isnt what i would have thought. People that have conservatives and liberals had basically the same and whats happened since then is that liberals have basically maintained the same level of trust in science and the moderates maintained the same relative distrust in science but conservative trust in sciences sam plummeting from just plummeting. So, its far well below now what kind of the moderate distrust in science is so the story and always interested in is why does that happen and thinking about that in the root of some of my work. It is surprising i think looking at the Apollo Missions for this nostalgia that we are seeing in the media, you get this sense that everyone loved it and everyone loved science in the 60s. As a space historian, tell me what youve learned about that. It is certainly a lens to nostalgia as i love it and everybody in the audience does, too during thehe actual apollo years of the 60s, the general public opposed it. The apollo 11 flight didnt reach majority approval and couldnt provide a sixmonth window of that mission so we have rebranded it as a Great Success but it wasnt appreciated by most of the public at the time because it was an enormous amount o of mon. We dont think very hard about this anymore but what it costs today is around 200 million may be a little bit more and that is built on top of another quarter of petroleum, 250 billion spent during the 1950s on the Ballistic Missile program that undergirdeundergirded at all anf americanamericans thought that n enormous amount of money that we could be spending solving other social problems that i wasnt alive for a frankly there were throughout the 1960s and especially late in the decade right around the apollo and people thought shouldnt resolve these problems before engaging in this grand techno spectacle . Its eye opening. Your organization studied science into peoples relationship with it for decades now through numerous polls looking at individual issues and science in general. Can you talk about any trends youve seen or surprises that you and your colleagues have unearthed a . The Research Center we do lots of nationally Representative Public opinion surveys. I just want to step back a little bit in terms of some of the big picture things we see. Number one, most americans say when you ask them that they see positive benefits coming from science on the whole. Number two, you often see this idea of continued optimism for scientific and technological develop and come up the space developments might be one of those, but other kinds of things coming up now people anticipate the continued change. But when it comes to trust, also we see more of a mixed pattern. On the whole people have a fair amount of confidence in scientists that fac to act in tt interest of the public but its usually a minority certainly less than half that have what you might think of as a strong trust saying they have a great deal of confidence, a larger group has kind of a fair amount of confidence, so you might think about that as kind of a soft positive. And it was brought up we only have one kind of survey in the u. S. That looked at trust over time from the 1970s to today, and what is surprising that there is not what they find is that confidence in scientists into the leaders of the Scientific Community has been stable over time and thats a striking because we are living in an era of lower trust and institutions particularly lower trust and governments today, so thats a striking and against some people aid relief in the community, but this table doesnt necessarily mean high. There is still room to grow. When you look at different issue is whether they use vaccines, genetically modified food, Climate Change or the teaching of evolution in schools, or all of those lumped together, do you have people like im against science and all those things . Its important to remember sciences the best enterprise and what we do is study the pieces that are connected with social issues were ethical issues or policy issues so w its not that surprising then that they sometimes also connect with our political divide and religious divide and other kind of divide in society, but one of the Key Takeaways we find it again and again is that how people think about the science related issues whether it is climate issues or vaccines or so on. Thereup is no single group in society that kind of takes what you might think of as a position that against the Scientific Consensus or skeptical of a Scientific Consensus position, so it varies. We know climateus issues are tighly politically polarized. That isnt a big surprise anymore but not everything is politically colorized so that is what is interesting. We are living in a time where we do have a lot of uncertainty in the future. We are looking at global Climate Change. Weve got these powerful tools, people are entering the genomes of human embryos and as youve said some have Strong Political religious overtones. Is it politics and religion that are polarizing people further against science . He studied muslims and their beliefs and so do you see this simple access in your work . Thats a great question. Thank you everyone for coming out tonight. I appreciate it. Im used to teaching undergraduates, so the fact that this is a full crowd means that theres either a final or i am doing something differently. [laughter] so, yes, so this is a great question and a sort o it sort of dovetails on what kerry was talking about. We find that there is not really a desire from any american that we interview either qualitatively or quantitatively in the surveys who dont like science. I mean it kind of won the game. It is extremely popular in america and that is part of the problem because they will tell you we dont actually know what science is if you talk to any sort of sociologist or historian of science into say there is a thing called science, their head will explode and they will get very upset because science is so chaotic. He may not even think that there is a single physics or biology they are so diverse and there are so many people doing differentg kinds of things comig yet i found in my work in creationist and muslim high schools, people are very comfortable talking about a thing called science and are convinced that science proves evolution wrong. Now, i dont think thats true, but its interesting that they feel the need to use science to make their case. You could imagine in another universe where they said no this is what the bible says and thats it, but they dont. So its interesting. When people hear the word creationist science, the thing they often hear is creationist. Really what you hear is the science than you think science is necessaryry and that is actually super interesting for me as a sociologist. To answer your question, you know, we really think those aref us have studied this stuff it really has to do with identity and so basically theres a lot of complicated jargon on this but essentially if something is important for your identity you dont want toou chang change ref something is not important people get new data and think okay sure i guess i will go there or do this. But if its relevant for your identity, you are unwilling to change and you will think lots of complicated ways around trying to keep thinking what you wanted to think to maintain the peace of your identity and so generally when people dislike multiple elements of science, its not because they are more or less committed to science that its because those elements of science together all conflict with different parts of their identity so its really about identities and not really about rational thinking or capacity to understand or deal with science. In fact tons of studies in my own work in a creationist high school, these kids did very well on their science test. They knew all the right answers, they just thought that they were wrong. So what do you do with that . It is a complicated problem. Its such an interesting point you raise like what do people mean by science and in a way its this big monolithic structure trusted or not trusted you have written some provocative pieces. One i recommended this title with a nation ruled by science is a terrible idea. Can you talk about some of your thesis and what do we mean by science . I will say if you want to have a nice day on twitter do not pick a fight with neil cressey tyson. [laughter] that is a poor life c choices. I just started my job and i got a letter copied to the chancellor of ucla saying how i shouldnt be allowed to call myself a scientist with social scientist which isnt a real scientist anyway which is kind of truth actually do that as a whole separate conversation. [laughter]ho but point is theres a huge debate that goes all the way back further than him but one of the articulators is the philosopher david hume talks about the distinction between what is and what ought to be so there itheres the question of u divide it and what we should do based on what we can see. Its a complicated question but i am pretty much in the school thaschool thatyou cant or at ly hard so if we have a thousand dollars as a city council, hopefully we get some more money that what are we going to do with that thousand dollars are we going to build a library, are we going to build a park and get a tax cut . Science cannot tell us what to do there. Science can help us know can kids have better life outcomes if they are by a library and science can help us know that there will be possibly more jobs and less taxes. Thats all great but whether or not the beauty of the park is intrinsically better than the sort of joy at a library isnt a scientific question and thats okay but there is something that we in philosophyom called scientism which isnt science but the idea that science and its rational thinking will solve all of our problems and its frankly antiintellectual and refuses to recognize the importance of philosophy and of the importance of poetry and art, of literature, all the kind of ways that think of life that science cant give us access to which isnt to say that it does integrate but it has a specific role to play. I think it also refuses to see that it can be manipulated for a lot of reasons and i want to look at Climate Change in that aspect it seems to be a clearsp issue where did i alisam and paid critics were able to attend whats happening in our planet and how quickly its happening. Your wonderful book merchants of dowd discusses this. Can you talk a little bit about what you found with your coauthor and the links between the Climate Science and tobacco science are very powerful. That book came about because someone through serendipity my job as a nasa historian allowed me to look into the records of directory and i was just looking to see what his recommendations had been in the early 1980s to what they should bee in the future and i had some free time and i noticed im sorry, i have something stuck in my throat. I hope that works. The one time i have to talk about mars and my voice went away and i sat there gasping for like five minutes before i could get going again. Lets hope that doesnt happen. And i just happened to notice in the finding that he had files and correspondence under the George Marshall institute and that organization i knew of because it has been engaged in some effort to cast doubt on deflation science. I was like what is this, the director of the oceanography one of the major Research Centers in the United States what does it, have to do with these guys and the answer is hes one of the c founders. That actually was a very toxic moment for me in the afternoon for me because iec could watch d see his records as the historian sometimes, but only a few weeks after that, but the meeting in germany and she was working on the flip side of this is an early adopter of Climate Science and went to his grave rejecting plate tectonics just utterly rejected it and she was interested in what causes this and why do some people accept the conclusions and what causes them to reject others. I think the answer very much depends on individuals upbringing and motivation ands o forth but then we got to talking about this issue for climate and one of us, we cant agree any more. If she thinks i did, i think she did, we agree to disagree and then we ha have something new because it is the same guy and argument is larger than together is with market fundamentalism, the idea that only unregulated free markets can best protect o human freedos and thats kind of where we end on that long complicated story. You mentioned this briefly, these political influences that shape and change how people view science and i wonder in the time ive been covering it been getting from both sides to increasing and i think the general language of your us humans are responsible for warming the climate and we are seeing the effects of it. Half the polls tracked the evolution around the thinking of Climate Change or have they been stilled by the political thinking on the topic . In the Public Opinion surveys about Climate Change, energy, Environmental Issues and perhaps as no surprise to you that there is a very wider political divide on the issues, so what you see are that republicans and democrats in particular just take totally different positions including things like the likelihood of effects on wildlife and other kind of thingsny so pretty much any question that you ask related to Climate Energy and environment issues. Weve seen the divided like this for a long time but its not the almighty. Remember we are living in the air of politicaera of politicalo what means all around the 2004 they just might end up so thats what they call the political polarization. The typical democrat, the issue positions of the Typical Group that grew further apart and so we are living in the era is more polarized do you see that liberals are less likely to vaccinate . They are not associated with politics you can find political divides particularly if you raise more policyy oriented issues there is a view about the role of government that drives a lot of the political divisions so if you are framing something in terms of should they be required or not you are more likely to see the political divide over that but our vaccines say how effective and further risks and benefits of any political divide. We have seen these huge outbreaks in california it seems to me people are putting others at risk. It remains a strong opinion on some. There are various religious communities opposed to vaccination. I would say this is not we were talking about the 1970s, but this is a very old story. This is a bit of a joke but i am going to do one of the most doubletree things an academic can do a site toqueville but it goes back to toqueville and the suspicion of authority in the United States so one of the things thatec led to the second great awakening in religious history which is the most obvious historical moment the second great awakening came out of the suspicion of ministers writes saying who are these ministers to tell me how to read the bible and these east coasters to tell me how. I can redefine on my own i dont need anyone telling me how toe o it but what historians point out is that its not just of ministers. Its about layers, government offic