“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

22% is distressingly low, especially given it’s on a downward trend still.

Plot from the article, for those who didn’t click through:

Edit: although I do wonder how much the absolute values are affected by the wording of the survey…

Superstition and darkness, we aren’t that far off. It’s like a Black Mirror episode

In the 2022 survey, Democrats’ confidence fell back to around pre-pandemic levels, with 53% reporting a great deal of confidence compared with 55% in 2018. But Republicans’ confidence continued its downward trend, dropping to 22% from 45% in 2018. Confidence in medicine has also grown more polarized since 2018. That year, Democrats and Republicans were about equally likely to say they had high confidence. By 2022, though, Republicans’ confidence had fallen to 26%, while Democrats’ has remained about the same as it was before the pandemic, at 42%.

Overall, 34% of Americans reported a great deal of confidence in medicine in 2022, compared with 39% before the pandemic.