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Americans Have Little Faith In Scientists, Science Journalists: Poll

Posted: 12/21/2013 11:23 am EST

57% don't trust Science studies "only a little" or "not at all".

83% don't trust scientific journals to get the facts right in their stories about scientific studies.

78% of Americans think that information reported in scientific studies is often (34 percent) or sometimes (44 percent) influenced by political ideology

The HuffPost/YouGov poll was conducted Nov. 23-24 among 1,000 U.S. adults using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church attendance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/21/faith-in-scientists_n_4481487.html

How much faith do Americans have in scientists and science journalists? Not a whole lot, a new survey finds.

In a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, only 36 percent of Americans reported having "a lot" of trust that information they get from scientists is accurate and reliable. Fifty-one percent said they trust that information only a little, and another 6 percent said they don't trust it at all.

Science journalists fared even worse in the poll. Only 12 percent of respondents said they had a lot of trust in journalists to get the facts right in their stories about scientific studies. Fifty-seven percent said they have a little bit of trust, while 26 percent said they don't trust journalists at all to accurately report on scientific studies.

What’s more, many Americans worry that the results of scientific studies are sometimes tainted by political ideology -- or by pressure from the studies’ corporate sponsors.

A whopping 78 percent of Americans think that information reported in scientific studies is often (34 percent) or sometimes (44 percent) influenced by political ideology, compared to only 18 percent who said that happens rarely (15 percent) or never (3 percent).

Similarly, 82 percent said that they think that scientific findings are often (43 percent) or sometimes (39 percent) influenced by the companies or organizations sponsoring them.

Republicans in the new poll were most likely to say that they have only a little bit of trust in scientists to give accurate and reliable information, and the most likely to say that they think scientific findings may be tainted by political ideology -- possibly reflecting distrust in scientists over topics such as evolution and climate change.

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Editor's note:These "studies" are actually meta-studies, meaning that they take a number of somewhat similar studies done by others in a defined period and lump them all together. For researchers, this is a great new way to get grants and other money without having to actually spend any money doing research. They still get to call it research though. They also get to massage the data of 30 studies with different parameters and reporting to make it all come out right.

“Enough Is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements.”

This week, the Annals of Internal Medicine—one of the world’s leading medical journals—published three studies evaluating the benefits of vitamins and dietary supplements.

The first study determined whether healthy people who received daily multivitamins had a lesser incidence of cancer or heart disease and whether they lived longer. The study was quite large, involving about 400,000 adults. Study participants were randomly divided into two groups: One group received daily multivitamins; the other didn’t. The authors found no difference in any medical outcome.

The second study examined about 6,000 men older than 65 to see whether daily multivitamins improved cognitive performance or verbal memory. The group that received multivitamins was indistinguishable from the group that didn’t.

The third study examined about 1,700 men and women with a history of a heart attack to see whether multivitamins could prevent another cardiac episode. Patients were followed for about five years. The study was limited by a high dropout rate, but again, multivitamins did nothing to prevent heart attacks in those at highest risk.

In the editorial that accompanied these studies, the authors summarized the evidence. “Beta-carotene, Vitamin E, and possibly high doses of Vitamin A supplements are harmful,” they wrote. “Other antioxidants, folic acid, and B vitamins, and multivitamin and mineral supplements are ineffective for preventing mortality or morbidity due to major chronic diseases.” In other words, megavitamins (which contain quantities in excess of the Recommended Daily Amount, or RDA) were potentially harmful, and multivitamins (which contain at or around the RDA) were useless. The title of the editorial wasn’t subtle: “Enough Is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements.”