Science and research can lead to important breakthroughs, but in a divided America, not everyone trusts the results. In this Us & Them, host Trey Kay speaks with three expert guests before an audience full of curious people at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia and asks: How shaken is our confidence in scientists and the scientific process?
Polls and surveys report our confidence is eroding and that we’ve lost trust in one another and in some of our most essential institutions.
As a followup to an Us & Them event in September at West Virginia University (WVU) on trust in the media, host Trey Kay has a new conversation focused on our trust in science. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to present examples of our differing confidence in science and medicine, but there are other flash points.
We continue the abortion debate with the central question of when life begins. A few decades ago, evolution was in the spotlight with divisions over the origins of the universe, and of our own species. Now, climate change clearly illustrates our varying understanding about how the world is changing. All of those topics place a spotlight on our confidence in science.
There was a time when scientific advances were heralded – they saved lives, they told us more about our world. But now, some see scientists as villains who are not always worthy of our trust.
Have we simply lost interest in scientists or in the scientific process?
Join us for a new Us & Them from a recent live event on the campus of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.
This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council, the Daywood Foundation and the CRC Foundation.
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Photo gallery: Members of the audience took advantage of a Q&A session to ask the guests a number of thoughtful questions. Credit: Julie Blackwood