Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg have written a very nice article entitled “Why do some people resist science?” in which they put forward the interesting discrepency between the status of the scientist and the trustworthiness of the scientist in society. Despite the fact that scientists are proud of their objectivity and method they still have not managed to convince everyone that they are telling the truth.
In a 2005 Pew Trust poll, for instance, 42% of respondents said that they believed that humans and other animals have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.
This means that almost half of the people asked rejected the basic theory of evolution.
But this rejection of science would be mistaken in the end. The community of scientists has a legitimate claim to trustworthiness that other social institutions, such as religions and political movements, lack. The structure of scientific inquiry involves procedures, such as experiments and open debate, that are strikingly successful at revealing truths about the world.
But these results also show something else. They show that no matter how much increased communication is available in society, on a certain level, individuals will not find the truth themselves. They will reject it in favor of belief. Additionally the over-belief in democracy will lead to the situation where untrained people will “know” better than the trained scientists.
