Americans Confidence in Zombie Scientists Holding Steady While Trust Falls for Other Scientists

By Bulletin Staff

Americans continue to hold zombie scientists in high esteem. Scientists in other fields? Not as much.

That’s the finding of a pair of recent public opinion surveys that show a widening trust gap between scientists who study the undead and those who have pursued others branches of science.

In its survey regarding zombie scientists, the Undead Research Council (URC) found that 87% of American adults had a “positive” (45%) or “very positive” (42%) opinion of zombie scientists.

Moreover, 93% of those surveyed by the URC agreed or strongly agreed with the sentence, “Zombie scientists act in the public interest,” and 94% had the same response to the proposition, “Zombie scientists help keep society safe from the undead.”

The URC surveyed 9,264 adults in the US throughout the month of November, collecting in person and telephone responses. The Council conducts its survey twice each year to measure public trust in, and support for, zombie scientists. The group advocate for greater government funding for research into the undead.

Declining Trust in non-Zombie Scientists

The findings in the URC survey contrast with the results of a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, which found that just under three-quarters (73%) of US adults expressed a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence that scientists would act in the best interests of the public.

That was a 14 percentage point drop from before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Pew, which did not delineate between scientific disciplines in its survey (they did ask about “medical scientists” separately, but did not specifically ask about zombie scientists).

The Center also noted that distrust of scientists has increased. “Roughly a quarter of Americans (27%) now say they have not too much or no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests, up from 12% in April 2020,” Pew reported.

In terms of how Americans view science’s impact on society, more than half (57%) of the 8,842 US adults surveyed by Pew agreed that the impact has been “mostly positive,” which was down by 16 percentage points from a pre-pandemic survey.

“About a third (34%) now say the impact of science on society has been equally positive as negative. A small share (8%) think science has had a mostly negative impact on society,” Pew reported.

Support for Government Spending

Both Pew and the URC asked Americans how they felt about government investments in science. The URC found broad support for continued public spending on scientific, social and military solutions to the zombie crisis: 92% of respondents in the URC survey favored maintaining (43%) or increasing (49%) investments to defeat the undead.

Likewise, fully 94% of respondents agreed with the sentence, “I support government efforts to achieve total victory over the undead menace,” while about the same (93%) said that it is important for the United States to lead humanity’s fight against the living dead.

In the Pew survey, too, Americans expressed support for ongoing public spending on science, with 78% saying that government investments “are usually worthwhile for society.” Also, 89% of the Pew respondents said that it is “somewhat important” (37%) or “very important” (52%) for the United States to be “a world leader in scientific achievement.”

Addressing Tomorrow’s Zombie Apocalypse

Amber Quill, the URC research director who leads the Center’s survey project, said that she was heartened by the continued high level of support for zombie scientists.

“Americans understand that the future of the nation depends on the brave scientists who risk their lives every day to help meet the challenge of the ravenous undead,” Quill said. “It’s imperative that Congress continue to fund the research that will ensure we can overcome the zombie threat.”

In an interview, Quill noted that Americans’ support for the zombie science community tends to rise and fall in concert with the number of outbreaks and victims of the undead around the country. But she emphasized the importance of ongoing government funding for zombie scientific research.

“We’re not going to solve the zombie crisis in a day, any more than we’re going to solve climate change, the declining effectiveness of antibiotics, or any number of other existential challenges facing humanity. That’s why it’s important that we have a consistent level of public investment. We’re not trying to solve today’s zombie crisis, we’re trying to prevent tomorrow’s zombie apocalypse,” she said.

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