This is a HeadGum podcast.

I don't know the truth.

I don't know the way.

I don't know what you think.

I don't know what you think.

You're the guitarist.

You're the guitarist.

I don't know anything.

Hello, welcome to Factually, I'm Adam Conover.

And this week, let's talk about science.

You know, we hear all the time in the media that a lot of Americans don't trust science.

And we've seen that during the pandemic, public health advice from some of the most experienced,

knowledgeable scientists in the country was treated by many like a partisan football

with arguments erupting everywhere over whether those scientists are really trustworthy.

The pandemic in many ways highlighted what seems to be a divide in how Americans view scientific expertise.

And so a lot of people, especially in the media, started asking,

what do we do about that?

How do we make people trust science?

Well, you know what?

I think that that is the wrong question to ask.

I don't think we can treat science as just some authority figure that we must trust

and we must bully other people into trusting.

...