Maybe I am in a different environment (particularly not being American), but the old scientists still exist and are still hard at work. In fact, all scientists I know (and I work in academia) care very little for misinformation on their day to day lives. They'll make fun of it, but don't have any more contact with them than anyone else. They still spend most of their time working on their actual projects. The only thing that changed is that now they're bending over backwards to include AI in their grants to make sure they're accepted, but having to include the latest buzzwords is nothing new.

Science communicators, on the other hand, yeah, those probably have their hands full with fixing misinformation.

Yeah op you're right, people who hate science are definitely liberals with dyed bright hair

I mean, everyone knows were on the back of a turtle, being held up by elephants

COVID was somehow the visceral turning point. Variations on visitor restrictions in hospitals still exist since then due to the extraordinary and amazing displays of bad behavior from that time.

People could always behave badly. Direct care staff, as one example, have been wearing panic buttons linked directly to security and calling a violence code over the announcement system, since around 2015 on the medical side of things.

But COVID was a severe escalation point. Families screaming in hallways that the diagnoses was “fake news” or part of the hospitals “corporate conspiracy” escalating to the point of pulling medical equipment off their loved ones, who could not breathe without that medical equipment.

Behaviors that could potentially kill people wrapped up in an inexorable belief that science was lying. No trust of medical personnel who are there to help whatever the system around them contrives to do with care.

While the behaviors are not like COVID times any more, there’s a residual skepticism of, well, everything since that time. Sadly, one that is preyed upon by politics to keep us fighting one another instead of punching up.

Forgive me, maybe “punching up” is now a ban-worthy turn of phrase.

I always think it's so weird when someone uses the ~~aryan~~ ~~nazi~~ blonde hair blue eye chad guy or whatever it's called to show the "good old days" or whatever. Additionally in this case I find it curious that the images used for the folks who seem to represent the regressive anti-science crowd are a group of characters with more diverse looks. Care to explain your choices OP? @not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone

Edit: thank you for the correction!

Eh... a lot of people were protesting "Frankenfood" when the human genome project was going on.

People have always been idiots about science, just that the idiots are more organized and more vocal now.

No shit it’s not shaped like an eagle. It’s shaped like a velociraptor.

It’s mostly the red hat cult that doesn’t trust science.

What do you have against Adam Conover, a certified member of the reality-based community and someone who has spent much of his career fighting on the side of facts against myth and misinformation?

People have started to believe that opinions are the same or better than facts. That's also the reason why politics is fucked.

It's an awkward example to pick. Human genome research was so controversial someone made an award-winning dystopian sci-fi movie to criticise it.

We did collectively get Maya Hawke out of that deal, though.

Incidentally, that was written by the same guy who made dystopian fiction about reality TV and corporate-sponsored vtubers before either thing existed. Andrew Niccol turned out to be amazing at spotting upcoming trends, terrible at identifying how exactly they would ruin things.

Science then: if you try to prove that the Earth orbits around the sun, we'll have you tortured and killed

Science now: 2x2 is not 6, but go off Terry

There’s always been people doubting science. Nothing new

It took me way too long and finally zooming in to realize the first dude didn't strap knives to his face...

This memes imagery couldn't be more reversed from reality even if the message is accurate.