Trumpism, climate and COVID: Social bases of the new science rejection

RESEARCH ARTICLE Trumpism, climate and COVID: Social bases of the new science rejection Lawrence C. HamiltonID* Department of Sociology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire, United States of America * lawrence.hamilton@unh.edu Abstract Although the hazards posed by greenhouse warming and COVID-19 are quite different, diagnosis and mitigation prospects for both depend heavily on science. Unfortunately, the reality of both threats has been subject to politicized science rejection in the US, making these deadly problems less tractable. There are substantial parallels between the two cases of science rejection, including common rhetoric and conservative political leadership. Sur- vey research has reached widely-replicated conclusions regarding the social bases of cli- mate-change perceptions. Corresponding studies of COVID-19 perceptions have found some political commonalities, but less agreement on other details. Here, we address this gap using generalized structural equation modeling (GSEM) and 2021 US survey data to make direct comparisons between the social bases of rejecting the reality of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) and rejecting COVID-19 vaccination. Trumpism, operationalized from approval of ex-president Trump, is viewed as an intervening variable that influences both types of science rejection. Trumpism itself is predicted by age, race, evangelical reli- gion, ideology, and receptivity to seemingly non-political conspiracy beliefs. Considering direct as well as indirect effects (through Trumpism), climate change and vaccine rejection

are similarly predicted by white and evangelical identity, conspiracism, and by education×i- deology and friends×party interactions. The finding that Trumpism exacerbates science rejection could also apply to other science- and expertise-related topics unrelated to climate and COVID. These results invite broader comparisons across topics, with analogous move- ments in other countries, and continued tracking as US Trumpism evolves beyond Trump. 1. Introduction Climate change has long been recognized by scientists as a major problem—potentially an existential threat to social and ecological systems [1,2]. The SARS-Cov2 virus with its variants emerged more recently but quickly attained major threat status as well, causing over one mil- lion known deaths in the US and six million worldwide in its first two years; the true totals are likely much higher [3,4]. Although the hazards posed by greenhouse warming and COVID-19 are quite different, diagnosis and mitigation prospects for both depend heavily on science. Unfortunately, scientific analysis, policy discussions, and even the basic reality of both threats PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293059 January 10, 2024 1 / 20 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Hamilton LC (2024) Trumpism, climate and COVID: Social bases of the new science rejection. PLoS ONE 19(1): e0293059. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0293059 Editor: Aaron Ettinger, Carleton University Faculty of Public Affairs, CANADA Received: September 3, 2022 Accepted: September 15, 2023

Published: January 10, 2024 Copyright: © 2024 Lawrence C. Hamilton. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. Funding: Research supported in part by a grant to LH from the US National Science Foundation (OPP- 1748325). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.