re: #81 ralphieboy

I would say that is the result of both cuts in education coupled a general decline in the quality of basic education: reading and developing critical thinking, trying to understand differeng points of view on an issue even if one is not in agreement, and learning the difference between hypothesis, theory, fact, myth and opinion.

I think it’s also a distrust of scientists promoted by those who’s ideology science doesn’t favor, and by some of the highly religious.

If you went back to the 1950s and asked the American public in general whether we should look to scientists for accuracy on scientific fact, you’d have gotten a strong ‘yes’. The long, long anti-intellectual and anti-science campaign of the right wing has weakened the US immeasurably.