A new survey has found that trust in science and scientists has increased with the COVID-19 pandemic, the New York Times reports.
About 80 percent of the respondents to the poll said they trusted science either "a lot" or "some," according to the Times. The poll was conducted by Gallup for the Wellcome Trust between August 2020 to February 2021 and included 119,000 people from 113 countries and territories.
This level of trust, the Times adds, was higher than in previous years. For instance, 41 percent of this year's respondents said they had a lot of trust in science and 43 percent had a lot of trust in scientists, while 31 percent of respondents to a 2018 survey had a lot of trust in science and 34 percent had a lot of trust in scientists.
The Times notes that this increase in trust contrasts with the rise of misinformation surrounding the virus and pandemic. It adds that another poll, conducted more recently by Gallup, found that confidence in science differs along ideological lines in the US. That 2021 poll found that while 64 percent of US adults overall had a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in science, 79 percent of Democrats and 45 percent of Republicans did.