Scientific Literacy and Trusting the Scientific Enterprise

For certain polarizing scientific issues, trust of science is in short supply. Surprisingly, it seems that greater scientific literacy only widens the ideological divide. But there are different ways of thinking about (and measuring) one’s scientific literacy. We propose an alternative picture of the public understanding of science that emphasizes the individual, social, and institutional processes by which scientific research is conducted and discuss its relevance for polarization of beliefs about climate change and one’s general trust of science.