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| NEWSDAY LLC/GETTY IMAGES |
Public trust in scientists fell again in 2023 even as COVID-19 has faded into the background for many Americans, according to a new report.
Survey results from Pew Research Center published on Tuesday found that confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interest fell from 77% in 2022 to 73% as of last month. It’s a far drop from 87% in April 2020, which quickly declined to 84% by November 2020 as the pandemic worsened.
The share of Americans who report having a “great deal” of confidence in scientists also continues to decline, dropping from 39% in April 2020 to 23% in October.
Those with little or little to no confidence in scientists have, perhaps not surprisingly, increased since the pandemic. The report found that 27% of U.S. adults fall into the category, which is up from 12% in April 2020.
The decline in trust in scientists is particularly prominent among Republicans, according to the survey. Nearly 4 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they have not too much or no confidence at all in scientists to act in the public’s best interests. It’s a large jump from the 14% of Republicans who felt the same way in April 2020. --->READ MORE HERE
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| ERIC BARADAT/AFP via GETTY IMAGES |
In a new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now admits that it recommended COVID-19 vaccines for people who had recovered from COVID-19 despite the fact that CDC subject matter experts didn't have access to the underlying data.
The stunning disclosure came in reply to a FOIA request for information on the CDC’s claim, first made on Oct. 29, 2021, that unvaccinated people with previous infection were five times more likely to get COVID-19 than vaccinated people.
The CDC’s claim was based on a CDC study published in the Nov. 9, 2021, edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The conflicts-of-interest section of the study had noted that a number of the study’s authors were being sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, Sanofi, and GlaxoSmithKline. At least four of the listed pharmaceutical companies were involved in the manufacturing and sale of COVID-19 vaccines.
Given that the conflict-of-interest disclosures were made at the time the study was first published, the CDC would have been aware of the heightened need to scrutinize its findings. However, this appears not to have happened. Notably, the CDC’s public pronouncement about unvaccinated COVID-19 survivors being five times more likely to get reinfected was made on the same day that the study was released as a preprint. This would have left no time for any review.
A lawyer who specializes in FOIA cases subsequently made a formal request for the data underlying the study. Last week, the CDC replied by admitting that the CDC didn't have this data. According to the CDC, the data was held by an "external partner organization and was maintained by a contractor." Notably, the CDC also acknowledged that "CDC subject matter experts didn't receive copies of the raw data prior to the contract termination."
Put another way, the CDC made its vaccination recommendation for people who already had COVID-19 without ever seeing or having had access to the underlying data. Furthermore, that data is now no longer available, meaning that neither the CDC, nor the general public, may ever know what it said. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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