When Ideology Trumps Science: Why We Question the Experts on Everything from Climate Change to Vaccinations

This book reveals how embedded beliefs more so than a lack of scientific knowledge and understanding are creating a cognitive bias toward information that coincides with personal beliefs rather than scientific consensus—and that this anti-science bias exists among liberals as well as conservatives.

• Provides readers with a clear understanding of how ideology and personal values supersede scientific consensus for people across the political spectrum

• Identifies key indicators of support for or opposition to current science-policy conflicts

• Explains how disagreement on issues such as climate change and vaccination results in inaction on these policy issues and negatively affects human and environmental health at the local, regional, national, and global levels

• Offers insights that may serve to break through the barriers of policy inaction caused by disagreement with scientific consensus