Trust in science as a means of discovering and understanding reality has declined among self-identified conservatives since the mid-1970s, sociologists at the University of North Carolina found, and even more so in recent years for those who held high level university degrees.

That last fact suggests that social pressures peculiar to the contemporary conservative upper classes — a segment of society to which, increasingly, one must belong to gain access to higher learning — are trumping education to determine their stances toward controversial issues, global warming and evolution among them. –ARK

Mother Jones:

Gordon Gauchat of the University of North Carolina published these findings in the forthcoming issue of the American Sociological Review. He looked back at data from 1974 through 2010, and found that trust in science was relatively stable over that 36-year period, except among self-identified conservatives. While conservatives started in 1974 as the group that trusted science most (compared to self-identified liberals and moderates), they have now dropped to the bottom of the ranking.

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