When you say "science", you need to distinguish between science as philosophy vs. science as an institution. Science as philosophy is a way of thinking - an attempt to understand knowledge and reality. The science as an institution on the other hand has all the imperfections as any other institution, since the people in charge are driven by self interest and not just the search for the truth. So, when you say the people distrust science, it seems bizarre that they doubt science as philosophy, while in fact they doubt the institution. It's perfectly fine to mistrust the institution. If you want to consider a few failures, just in the recent years, I have some for you:
- Hungarian-born biochemist Katalin Karikó, who developed the key mRNA modification that enabled effective COVID-19 vaccines, was repeatedly denied grants and demoted during her career. She and her collaborator, Drew Weissman, struggled for years to gain recognition and funding for their work [1]
- On the other hand, the Wuhan Institute of Virology had no trouble getting grants from NIH [2]
- Surgeon General Jerome Adams was saying that masks are not effective against Covid [3]
- Social distancing was of supreme importance, until it turned out that it's fine not to distance if it's for a good cause [4]
> So, when you say the people distrust science, it seems bizarre that they doubt science as philosophy, while in fact they doubt the institution.
The vast, vast, vast majority of the Christian fundamentalists whom are the backbone of this movement and the subject of this discussion do not distinguish between these things. They do not distrust "big science," they distrust science, full stop. The fact that science as an institution is subject to the same corruptive forces as every other institution is a convenient post-hoc rationalization for the belief they already had and wanted to justify, just like a lot of other post-hoc rationalizations they have for other beliefs they have. They dislike science now because they are told to by their ministers, no more reason than that, and we know this because science and their religion coexisted peacefully and uneventfully for centuries until it become inconvenient for a segment of the church's politics. Excluding of course Gallileo, and for the same reasons.
Science (both as philosophy and institution) gets it wrong, but has built-in mechanisms that correct those issues. Eugenics was discredited by science. Andrew Wakefield's bullshit autism study was discredited by science. Religion gets it wrong and then calls it mystery.
It’s especially ironic to hear institutional corruption invoked as a critique of science, when many of the loudest voices in this conversation come from religious institutions that have spent decades shielding their own leadership from accountability for far more egregious abuses.
- Hungarian-born biochemist Katalin Karikó, who developed the key mRNA modification that enabled effective COVID-19 vaccines, was repeatedly denied grants and demoted during her career. She and her collaborator, Drew Weissman, struggled for years to gain recognition and funding for their work [1]
- On the other hand, the Wuhan Institute of Virology had no trouble getting grants from NIH [2]
- Surgeon General Jerome Adams was saying that masks are not effective against Covid [3]
- Social distancing was of supreme importance, until it turned out that it's fine not to distance if it's for a good cause [4]
[1] https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/01/kariko-problem-lessons-f...
[2] https://www.bmj.com/content/382/bmj.p1701
[3] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/07/01/8862991...
[4] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-hea...