Why Don't Some People Believe In Science?

This Seeker explainer asks a simple question: why do some people reject well-established science, such as vaccine safety or climate change, even when the evidence is strong? The short answer is that belief is rarely just about evidence.

What the video covers

• Why some people distrust vaccines, climate science and other well-established findings
• The psychology behind rejecting evidence
• Why simply repeating facts often fails to change minds

The research

Psychologists describe several overlapping causes. Motivated reasoning: people tend to accept evidence that fits what they already believe and reject what threatens it. Identity: when a scientific question becomes a marker of political or group identity, accepting the evidence can feel like betraying your group. Trust: people judge a message by who delivers it, so distrust of scientists or institutions spills over onto the science. A widely cited 2022 review in PNAS, "Why are people antiscience, and what can we do about it?", groups these into four bases: the source, the recipient, the message, and a mismatch between the message and how the recipient thinks.

Related reading: Antiscience, Public Trust in Science and Bayes' Theorem and the Logic of Science Denial.