> We seem to be in an anti-science phase right now - death threats against Dr. Fauci are a poignant example.
As always, people are on a spectrum. There will always be vocal anti-science minorities (flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, etc.) no matter how enlightened the civilization. But hopefully they largely stay that way - minorities.
Furthermore, there are people who are quick to trust new science and people that are slow to trust new science (think people that instantly embrace the latest study vs. people that are instantly skeptical of the latest study). Both sets of people may be completely pro-science and trust in the scientific method, but the disagreement arises on how fast the scientific method converges on truth, the perceived strength of the presented evidence, etc. Sometimes I think we are too quick to label people in the second set as "anti-science".
> Are they minorities though? I think current anti-science stances are far more widespread than your post seems to give credit for.
It is all speculation until we have real hard numbers. It's easy to argue in both directions.
People believed all kinds of conspiracies when I was a kid. And people still do. The only difference is that it's more visible now. In the pre-WWW days you'd only hear it if you were in the room with them. Now you can see it even if they said it days ago.
Carl Sagan wrote The Demon Haunted World in the 90's, and it is mostly about exactly this: Whereas science had made tremendous progress in his life, the attitudes and crazy beliefs people have had not shifted much. The whole book is a lament about this, and a certain amount of bitterness on this being the case despite him spending most of his life promoting science.
Probably the only real thing that has changed is the role and type of media people consume. In the 80's if a whole bunch of people believed something that was clearly wrong, and were geographically spread out, they didn't have an easy means to make that an issue for elections. You would need to form a lobby group which takes time and money. The newspapers usually did not entertain them.
Now you don't need newspapers and news channels to get your message out. You have Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, etc. The cost to organize and spread your message is much lower. So tiny fringe groups have the potential to be much more influential. The politicians can now exploit that.
> Are they minorities though? I think current anti-science stances are far more widespread than your post seems to give credit for.
There definitely are a group of hardcore anti-science people, but I think it's far less widespread than you credit. It may appear more widespread because there is a tendency by some to present public policy preferences as 'science'. Since public policy choices always involve specific intention (what is our desired outcome) and trade-offs (what policies are we precluding by choosing this one) they are not 'science', they are rational proposals based on scientific evidence, and in some cases they can be rationally disagreed with in terms of both intents and trade-offs.
Again though, people are on a spectrum. It's not strictly "I trust all science" vs. "I don't trust any science".
It could be "I trust 'pure' science but I can't tell if this particular science has been tainted by politics or money or corporate interests so I'm not sure I trust it". So any given pro-science person might hold one or more "anti-science stances" for various reasons.
I agree that anti-science bias is more widespread than some here seem willing to admit (perhaps they just haven't noticed or hang around in circles where it's rampant?). Anti-vaxxes, climate change deniers, anti-maskers - it seems pretty rampant in parts of the US (especially in the red states). We like to think that society moves linearly "up and to the right" - towards more enlightenment, but history shows that that's not always the case and we seem to be living through a period of history where it is not the case.
As always, people are on a spectrum. There will always be vocal anti-science minorities (flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, etc.) no matter how enlightened the civilization. But hopefully they largely stay that way - minorities.
Furthermore, there are people who are quick to trust new science and people that are slow to trust new science (think people that instantly embrace the latest study vs. people that are instantly skeptical of the latest study). Both sets of people may be completely pro-science and trust in the scientific method, but the disagreement arises on how fast the scientific method converges on truth, the perceived strength of the presented evidence, etc. Sometimes I think we are too quick to label people in the second set as "anti-science".