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Why Being Anti-Science Is Now Part Of Many Rural Americans’ Identity | FiveThirtyEight

Why Being Anti-Science Is Now Part Of Many Rural Americans’ Identity | FiveThirtyEight

Section titled “Why Being Anti-Science Is Now Part Of Many Rural Americans’ Identity | FiveThirtyEight”

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  • this anxiety stemmed from an attitude that pits rural, hands-on knowledge against the kind of knowledge obtained from institutions like universities or government bureaucracies — a kind of anti-establishment view that extends to scientists.
  • an example of this phenomenon is land-grant institutions using their rural extension services to bring the latest agricultural research to recalcitrant farmers who don’t want to be told how to farm.
  • the researchers wrote that those who distrust scientists and other official sources of authority “distinguish those who are ‘book smart’ from those who have common sense, the latter of which they view as a superior means of ascertaining truth.”
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  • What struck me most about my time with Naylor and Jackson is that they were both also hunters and, despite being experts in their field, already had a level of trust with the hunters they were trying to convince. They spoke with mid-Southern accents, drove trucks and wore camo. They’re well-educated experts, but it’s hard to imagine that local and out-of-state duck hunters would see them as eggheads that could be easily dismissed. When Booth described his staff’s expertise to me, he said they had “dirt under their fingernails,” which was similar to how Lunz Trujillo explained the kind of experiential knowledge valued by farmers and other rural folks.