I don’t think it’s a trope - unfortunately. There’s so many examples of people using “science” as a political football that they’ve undermined themselves. We’ve got public health experts encouraging people to protest racial justice in the height of a pandemic as if a virus cares about the nobility of your cause, and that’s just a most recent example. History is littered with us being wrong or just downright manipulative with data / science / experts.

Said to say that I think parent thread has it right - people need to have faith in the method - not the experts - and realize that the method does not yield infallible results. It’s simply the best mechanism for getting the truth with the data we currently have. And people need to be able to parse out when they are seeing data-driven conclusions over when experts are just saying dumb/political things. That can’t be a referendum on “science”.

Another significant factor is the belief we are in the end times and thus whatever we do doesn't matter (or worse, may delay the end). A large minority believes this[0], but they have outsized influence among politicians, at least in the US.

Further, they believe that their holy literature is perfect and because science changes, science must be wrong[1]. Therefore, we should just follow what the book says, which is that there will be a rapture.

0: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2010/07/14/jesus-chris... where christ's return means the end times. 1: unfortunately I don't have a citation for this, but it's something I've seen a lot.

The assumption of universal ignorance on the part of non-"scientists" is ... pretty amazing.

I think we'd be pretty amazed at what people can discover, when the raw data and the analytical procedures used to draw conclusions from that data are exposed to scrutiny.

I think you're confusing something here. I'm not claiming we don't need open data nor am I claiming that the non-academic populus would be unable to make interesting observations with open data. I'm saying that of those people that deny scientifically validated claims (like climate change or the efficacy of vaccinations) the majority would not be able to make interesting (and valid) observations, nor would it be in their interest to do so.

I know how to run climate simulations, given a huge dump of climate data I would _not_ be able to draw any new conclusions out of it, I can guarantee that to you.

My point is that this idea that distrust in science stems from a lack of open data is wrong, and instead product of concerted and ongoing effort of propaganda and defunding of academia. Climate change is at this stage more a political problem than it is a scientific one.

> instead product of concerted and ongoing effort of propaganda and defunding of academia.

I think that's certainly true, but it doesn't account of the scores of unforced errors that our institutions and academy's are making on an almost daily basis that has eroded any credibility. Here are just a few examples...

CDC tweets that masks are 80% effective at "reducing your chance of getting COVID" - which is highly selective and word smithed information AT BEST. The real number is more like 11% and only when it's surgical. CDC fails to mention at all the cloth masks are pretty inadequate - which would be actual helpful information for people... https://twitter.com/cdcdirector/status/1456645731691925518 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02457-y

American Academy of Pediatrics pushes FDA to approve vaccines and decries FDA's request for 1K more subjects to add to the 1500 in the trial. Then goes on to say Delta is "very dangerous to children" even though there is still no evidence to suggest that Delta is any more dangerous for children and rate of hospitalized chidren with serious disease hasn't changed from 2 in 100,000. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/american-academy-of-pediat... https://apnews.com/article/delta-variant-coronavirus-kids-40...

We could go on and on. People are not stupid. They see this stuff, know that they are being misled and that erodes trust. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter if the misleading is in good faith or not.

I think your statement "those people that deny scientifically validated claims (like climate change or the efficacy of vaccinations)" pretty much sums up why the general populous is done with "Trust the Science".

When you push wildly experimental things by calling them "Vaccinations", when they do not confer immunity (!) but primarily reduce symptoms, and hence are not a "public good" (protect the at-risk unvaccinated population), but are a "personal good" (reduce your individual risks) -- it is, in fact, you that are destroying the credibility of public vaccination programs! People aren't stupid. Avoiding a potentially risky genetic treatment that doesn't confer community protection, when I believe effective treatments are available, is sound logic.

Likewise, creating artificial markets that penalize highly efficient, clean and non-murderous producers of hydrocarbon products (ie. Canadian), while simultaneously giving a complete pass to murderous and polluting regimes (China, Middle-Eastern) is repugnant. A "solution" which is this terrible is not acceptable, and hence will be rejected (eg. by people, for example, that don't agree with tossing gays off roof-tops or harvesting organs from undesirable people groups)

So, until "those people" who conflate rejecting insane non-immunizing experimental treatments with denying "vaccine efficacy", or conflate rejecting ineffective transfers of wealth from law-abiding oil producers to murderous polluters as rejecting "climate change" -- we're not going to reach agreement on "trusting the science".