.... and why it could take decades to recover

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02800-9 

“I’ve never seen such an orchestrated war on the environment or science,” says Christine Todd Whitman, who headed the EPA under former Republican president George W. Bush.

Science is just fine.  But people's confidence in science is shaky.  

There is a strong anti-intellectual flavor to American culture.  In the science area some of this is the fault of how science has been used and some of it is not. 

Also science has been dragged -- selectively into the culture war arena.  We are told to believe the science in some areas -- the left likes the science data for global warming but not human sexuality and when life begins and the right has those reversed.  

There is little employment of what is known in my circles as the Gerstner Rule -- You do not have the right to debate an opponent until you can state to his satisfaction the point he is trying to make. 

We evangelicals have a very sad anti intellectual , anti science component to our history.  My son in law is helping write a multi volume history of Religion and Science in American Life.