Why Are So Many Americans Skeptical About the Validity of Science?

It's remarkable. I think this is due to the intensely religious nature and as it turns out to be sectarian religious nature, not just spiritual, the country that includes a large percentage of fundamentalism and I believe the third in turn is due to the fact that the United States is still much a frontier nation.

The fundamentalism really began in this country when people spread out into frontier country settled all the way from western Pennsylvania there used to be a lake frontier all across the country and as they did they established local churches and sects based largely from the bible, because they didn't have bishops to guide them, they didn't have great theologians to learn from, and so on.

They had to have some general positive, reliable, resource for religious belief and for moral judgement. As the Bible is what they it had left the heritage of American fundamentalism.