The bigger problem and the one that is more damaging to public trust in science is actually politicians (and bureaucrats and other government and non-government institutions) who spread disinformation that policy is science. Their policy is "based on the science" they will claim, and therefore to disagree with their policy is to be a "science denier" they assert, without evidence. These dishonest interests essentially hijack the good name of science by fooling low information voters.
There is a lot of science around epidemiology, virology, vaccines, and medicine. There is no evidence based scientific consensus that it was the "correct" policy to shut down large parts of the economy, subsidize mothballed businesses, admit COVID positive patients to nursing homes, impose emergency policies impinging on human rights like restricting travel and association and medical autonomy, or fast-track vaccines for COVID.
You could argue for those policies, but it should have been completely reasonable to argue against them. That does not make you "anti-science". People can and should question the efficacy of the vaccines, and the lies that were repeated by certain "news" corporations and politicians who had interests in and donations from pharmaceutical companies, with fantastical claims about them that turned out to be false. That does not make you "anti-science" either.
Similar thing with the science of greenhouse gasses and global warming. There is a lot of science around the fundamentals of those mechanisms, there is a lot of science showing that warming can gravely damage ecosystems and human societies and therefore limiting human CO2 emissions would be a benefit. That's great, that is science. What is not science is any particular government policy purported to help this. Proposing to reduce or tax GHG emissions in one country and thereby incentivize production in another country (with far higher emissions intensity of production) is not "science". It's not "anti-science" or "climate denier" to question or disagree with a policy like that, for example.
There is a lot of science around epidemiology, virology, vaccines, and medicine. There is no evidence based scientific consensus that it was the "correct" policy to shut down large parts of the economy, subsidize mothballed businesses, admit COVID positive patients to nursing homes, impose emergency policies impinging on human rights like restricting travel and association and medical autonomy, or fast-track vaccines for COVID.
You could argue for those policies, but it should have been completely reasonable to argue against them. That does not make you "anti-science". People can and should question the efficacy of the vaccines, and the lies that were repeated by certain "news" corporations and politicians who had interests in and donations from pharmaceutical companies, with fantastical claims about them that turned out to be false. That does not make you "anti-science" either.
Similar thing with the science of greenhouse gasses and global warming. There is a lot of science around the fundamentals of those mechanisms, there is a lot of science showing that warming can gravely damage ecosystems and human societies and therefore limiting human CO2 emissions would be a benefit. That's great, that is science. What is not science is any particular government policy purported to help this. Proposing to reduce or tax GHG emissions in one country and thereby incentivize production in another country (with far higher emissions intensity of production) is not "science". It's not "anti-science" or "climate denier" to question or disagree with a policy like that, for example.