Public Opinion on Scientists’ Role In Policymaking: A Data Analysis

Abstract

From climate change to healthcare, there are a myriad of public policies that relate to scientific fields in the United States. Policymakers rely on scientific data and research to write these policies, but there is debate on if these policies match the people’s desires and are altruistic. In our research, we will understand the public’s opinion on medical scientists and scientists acting in the public’s best interests, and analyze how this impacts the public’s opinion on scientific experts in making policy decisions. In order to accomplish this, we are referencing a dataset that details a survey questionnaire designed by a Pew Research Study aimed at understanding how Americans perceive science and gauge their levels of confidence in science and medical scientists. By using R’s polr package to execute an ordinal logistic regression, we can determine the relationship between the public’s confidence in medical scientists and scientists as well as the public’s confidence in scientific expert’s abilities to make policy decisions. Our next steps will be to run this regression model, and the findings obtained by running this regression will show how the explanatory variables impact the level of confidence in the ordinal variable. By leveraging the results from our statistical analysis, policymakers can gain insight on if the public prefers them working in conjunction with scientists, and increasing a scientist’s role in policymaking, or if only scientific facts should be used. Ultimately, this research works to boost public trust in the scientific field and the policies that are passed.