Institutional Distrust on the Rise Due to Overt Political Bias
As with other institutions,
people are getting wise to
the biases of Big Science
Of all institutions, science was supposed to be trustworthy. But without integrity, science is nothing.
Integrity is soundness of moral character; it is honesty. Scientists must be willing to tell the truth even if it is costly, even when no one is looking. A scientist of integrity will relate true experimental outcomes even if they contradict a favored hypothesis, or displease a funding agency.
Institutional Distrust Is Widespread
Lack of integrity is rampant in many human institutions. The political divide in America is most clearly demonstrated in the media, where Candidate X is portrayed either as a saint or as the devil incarnate, depending on which channel one watches. The public is rightly skeptical of the media’s ability to report the facts objectively when even “fact-checkers” have been exposed as arms of one political party. Overt bias is also apparent in business, where managers are either DEI/non-DEI or woke/anti-woke. Entertainment is another institution known for bias, with political themes suffusing plot scripts. Political bias has even corrupted sports.
Big Science Has Egg on Its Face
Science, however, was supposed to be untouched by political bias. People were taught to respect “evidence-based” findings from scientific methods thought to guarantee objectivity. Then Covid-19 hit. Almost everyone initially rushed to get the new untested RNA vaccines—remember the long lines of cars?—only to find out that some people got severe side effects. The public was told to keep six feet apart, only to learn years later that Anthony Fauci made that rule up. Everyone had to wear masks, later to learn that some masks were worthless at preventing viral contamination and even did more harm than good. Parents watched their children suffer from social deprivation for almost a year at home, and businesses closed due to the lockdowns. A man was arrested for paddleboarding alone in the ocean. Hospitals forbade family members from visiting a dying relative. Navy Seals, firefighters and health workers were fired for refusing the vaccine. PhD scientists outside the consensus who had signed the Great Barrington Declaration, advocating only those most at risk being isolated, were censored and shamed. Doctors were threatened if they prescribed other medications than the vaccine.
Millions suffered from findings of “science” that had little to do with evidence. Political leaders and TV ads proclaimed that “If you get the vaccine, you will not get Covid!” but then these same leaders got Covid after taking all the vaccines and boosters. Now, reports are surfacing about strategies for mass compliance that were not evidence-based, but instead were geared to maximize profits for Big Pharma. Social media giants like Twitter and Facebook geared their algorithms to censor views that differed from the “scientific consensus.” And worst of all, Big Science has been vociferously anti-Republican and pro-Democrat for many years now (see 9 July 2024 and 21 May 2024 or search on our topic “Politics and Ethics”). The leftist bias in science is blatant and undeniable now; the leading science journal Nature (in the UK), for instance, recently endorsed Kamala Harris for US president to “Trump-proof US science,” even though many in both parties consider Harris the most unpopular and incompetent Vice President in American history who failed miserably at her one assignment, the border. She is now being given a makeover by the media with Big Science cheering her on.
Once again, we want to make clear that nothing said here is meant to disparage individual scientists who work with integrity. This is about institutional science—Big Science—that presumes to speak for science.
Big Science has no one to blame but itself
Annenberg Survey Finds Public Perceptions of Scientists’ Credibility Slips (26 June 2024, University of Pennsylvania). The Annenberg Public Policy Center at U Penn has reported a significant drop between 2018 and 2024 in the numbers of people trusting science. In just the last year (2023 to 2024), for instance, there have been declines of up to 7% in those disagreeing with statements that “scientists are competent” or “scientists are trustworthy” or “scientists share my values.” A majority still agree with those statements either strongly so or somewhat, but a significant fraction have no opinion, especially on the last question of shared values.
Trust in physicians and hospitals declined over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic (31 July 2024, Massachusetts General Hospital). A key finding was that many people became aware of overt bias and mixed motives in the healthcare industry. “Among the leading contributors to low trust were concerns about financial motives, quality of care, influence of other entities or agendas, and perception of discrimination or bias.”
What science communicators could learn from marketing professionals (29 July 2024, The Conversation). Communications specialist Hannah Little recognizes that public distrust of science (what she calls “disinformation”) has been growing. How to fix it? Hire marketing professionals!
Down on Earth, pandemics and the existential threat of the climate crisis have highlighted the importance in how people feel and communicate about science. At times, in pockets of the USA, misinformation and science denial are winning out. So could scientists can learn something from PR and marketing professionals?
In other words, Hannah Little thinks that people are misinformed if they don’t kowtow to the consensus, even though many individuals and businesses have suffered harm from policies enacted to help “solve” Covid-19 and climate change with expensive “Green New Deal” initiatives.
Systemic Bias
These rare admissions of public distrust found in mainstream sources illustrate a conundrum: conservatives cannot get a fair and balanced report on mistrust, because Big Science and Big Media are in cahoots to push a narrative: anyone doubting “the science” must either be a conspiracy theorist or uninformed. For this reason, additional sources outside the institutions must compensate for their lack of objectivity.
Consider this comparison. Big Social Media presents itself as a free speech platform that is objective. On September 13, millions of viewers watched an assassination attempt on former President Trump on live TV. In the following weeks, the public watched institutions involved (the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security) dance around questions about their clear failures to protect Trump. Their lack of transparency fed speculations that they were trying to cover their assets rather than tell the whole truth (see Newsmax). And then the Google Search engine flunked Objectivity 101 when individuals went looking for information about the assassination attempt. For a few days (till Google was exposed), searchers were shocked when entering “assassination attempt on Tr” to see Google’s phrase completion return anything but Trump: “assassination attempt on Truman” and other responses. Facebook was caught censoring the iconic image of Trump surrounded by Secret Service agents after the shooting with fist raised above his blood-stained face in front of the American flag.
Looking outside the institutions
Given this bias, could anyone expect Big Science or Big Social Media to tell the whole truth about public mistrust of science? And so consider these articles from experts outside the left-leaning institutions.
How the Public Health Establishment Squandered Our Trust (23 May 2024, Evolution News). Wesley J. Smith is one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics. He fingers Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins for the drop in public trust in public health, but says they are not the only ones to blame.
Fauci and Collins are not solely responsible for the Covid-policy debacle. They could not have so dominated public responses to the pandemic but for the mainstream media’s abandoning all skepticism, the meek acquiescence by a myriad of elected officials, enforcement by corporations of authoritarian policies such as vaccine mandates, and the duplicity of teachers’ unions that insisted on school closings and sought to use the pandemic to achieve their overarching social agendas, among others.
Dehumanizing Skeptics of the “International Order” (14 June 2024, Evolution News). Wesley J. Smith examines the emotional reaction against skeptics of global governance. One of the outraged is editor of a leading medical journal.
The Lancet‘s editor in chief, Richard Horton, is furious at people who don’t believe in the international community. The “system” is failing, he says — and it’s the fault of evil right-wingers.
In a signed editorial in the world’s oldest medical journal, Horton bemoans the plight of Gazans and the fighting that has badly damaged hospitals — without once mentioning that Hamas terrorists hide and store lethal arms in these medical facilities or that they have stolen who-knows-how-many billions in aid over the years, directed at the Palestinian people, to construct intricate tunnel systems from which to attack Israel.
Then, Horton focuses on his real target. He blows a gasket while casting deep aspersions on skeptics of international institutions….
This is why one is not going to get a fair and balanced view of Big Science from its own biased outlets, or from Big Media, which tends to echo uncritically whatever the journals say. It would be like trying to learn about communism by reading Pravda. Just as you can only see fogma by standing outside of it, to see Groupthink, you need to stand outside the group.
The Big Science Cartel is entirely 100% Darwinian. (Any Darwin skeptics inside the consensus know to keep their mouths shut.). Being Darwinians, they don’t really care about truth. They care about fitness, which in political terms means political power to keep surviving as a party whether or not their policies work.
You can always tell who’s on the wrong side of history. It’s the totalitarians; the ones who want to censor the opposition. It takes time for the wrong side to collapse; for the Soviet Union, it took 70 years of terror. Now, however, historians see the lonely citizens who told jokes about the Soviet regime as the ones who, ultimately, were on the right side of history.