The scientific community … has been concerned about this growing distrust in the public with science. And what I found in the study is basically that’s really not the problem. The growing distrust of science is entirely focused in two groups—conservatives and people who frequently attend church.

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Gordon Gauchat, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina, says conservatives, even those with college degrees, distrust science now more than ever.

It’s interesting to me that Gauchat uses the term “distrust” in regard to the 40-year attack on science. It’s accurate, in a sense, but I hear the word “belief” used far more often, as in “I don’t believe that global warming is caused by humans” or “I don’t believe in the theory of evolution”. Which is so incredibly telling because science, unlike the pseudo-intellectual pillar of conservatism that is religion, doesn’t need to be believed to be true.

If science is a process for understanding how the world around us works and politics is an attempt to solve the problems pluralistic societies face in that world, this is troubling. That one half of the political spectrum is simply going to ignore established fact leaves little hope for consensus. Even as conservative ideology and policies make less and less sense in the face of broad scientific consensus, having one side simply dig in won’t lead to much meaningful progress.