How do you view science and scientists? Are they the same thing? Would you say you have equal trust in them or do you see one as more trustworthy than the other? Since the COVID-19 pandemic, confidence in science has been in decline in the US and elsewhere, but at the same time, the institution remains highly regarded within American society, and nearly three-quarters of the public hold scientists in high confidence. So how are we to understand this strange shift in attitudes?
The first step is to understand the extent of the situation, and it’s not great. In November 2023, a Pew Research Center survey showed that trust in scientists is now lower than it was before the pandemic, and this has been experienced across the political divide (though Republicans express greater doubts and objections than Democrats). For instance, 73 percent of US adults had “a great deal or fair amount” of confidence in scientists, but that was down 14 points from the start of the pandemic.
Similarly, 57 percent of Americans believe science itself, as an institution, has mostly had a positive effect on society, but this was eight percent lower than in 2021, and 16 points lower than before the start of the pandemic.
And while trust in science has slipped, actual distrust has risen – now just over a quarter of Americans (27 percent) say they have little or no confidence that scientists act in the public’s interests. This distrust was up 12 percent from April 2020.
Yet in many ways, the pandemic was a demonstration of science at its best, working under extreme global pressures. As Arthur Lupia, the lead author of a new report from the Strategic Council of the National Academies of Sciences, raised in a statement: “There was great science behind the Covid-19 vaccine, so why was the idea of people taking it so controversial?”
“Covid deaths were so visible and yet the controversy over the vaccine was also so visible – kind of an icon of the public-health implications of declining trust in science.”
Bias in science
According to Lupia and colleagues’ research, part of the issue at play here is ideas around shared values. There is broad public agreement about the morals that should underpin science, but the public has concerns over the ability of individual scientists to live up to them. In short, can scientists be relied upon to act against their personal biases?
The subject of bias in science is a significant one that has received increasing amounts of academic attention in recent years.
Science itself has a weighty history filled with some uncomfortable areas that many scientists overlook. As the historian of science, Subahdra Das, recently told IFLScience, the important thing to remember is that “advances in science and technology in the West serve political ends and they always have”.
Throughout history, that has involved some voices being championed over others (such as the involvement of non-European historical actors in the story of scientific discoveries), some ideas having greater strength because of the ends they serve (such as eugenics in Western countries other than Nazi Germany), and some power relations that marginalize minorities – such as people of color, LGBTQ+ communities, and aged populations.
Today, we are more aware of these previous historical blind spots than we have ever been, and the work continues. But there are still questions as to the extent to which the current loss of confidence in science, and in scientists more generally, is part of this process, or something else – and that requires asking some hard questions.
“We’re of the view that trust has to be earned,” Lupia said. “We wanted to understand how trust in science is changing, and why, and is there anything that the scientific enterprise can do to regain trust?”
So what’s the damage?
An assessment of Lupia and colleagues’ recent study offers some valuable insights into the current situation. Overall, it seems confidence in science is still high compared to other civic, cultural, and government institutions (science isn’t the only one struggling at the moment).
It also appears the public still has high confidence in scientists’ competence, trustworthiness, and honesty. Around 84 percent of those surveyed by the Annenberg Public Policy Centre (APPC), which provided the data for Lupia’s study, said they were “somewhat” or “very” confident that scientists provide trustworthy information in their areas of inquiry.
However, this matter of shared values and scientists’ ability to overcome their own biases became more apparent. For instance, when participants were asked whether they think scientists would or would not publish findings if a study’s results contradict the interest of the organization running the study, 70 percent believed the scientists wouldn’t publish their findings.
When asked about scientists’ biases, a little over half of US adults (53 percent) believed scientists provide unbiased conclusions about their area of inquiry and only 42 percent said scientists generally are “able to overcome their human and political biases”.
Transparency and open-mindedness were also key factors. For example, 84 percent of US adults believed it was “somewhat” or “very” important for scientists to disclose their funders, while 92 percent said it was “somewhat” or “very” important for scientists to be open to changing their minds if the evidence suggests it.
How to raise confidence
So what does this information tell us about raising confidence in science? The first thing to acknowledge is that the solution should not be based on the idea that the public has no opinion of worth.
As the researchers explain in their paper, the solution “should not be premised on the assumption that society would be better off with higher levels of uncritical trust in the scientific community. Indeed, uncritical trust in science would violate the scientific norm of organized skepticism and be antithetical to science’s culture of challenge, critique, and self-correction.”
In essence, this is the ability to “eat humble pie” and admit it when things go wrong, as Professor Jim Al-Khalili recently told IFLScience.
But as delicious as this pie may be, simply admitting it is only part of the solution. According to the researchers, there needs to be a commitment among scientists, scientific organizations, and the scientific community “writ large” to communicate this to the public, and to be seen to be critical of those found to be abusing their positions. As Lupia and colleagues explained, there needs to be an effort to “correct the published record in ways that both merit and earn public confidence.”
The evidence, they believe, shows that only by embracing science’s core values of “the culture of critique and correction, peer review, acknowledging limitations in data and methods, precise specification of key terms, and faithful accounts of evidence in every step of scientific practice and in every engagement with the public may help sustain confidence in scientific findings.”
The study is published in PNAS.
Source Link: In Science We Trust, But Individual Scientists? People Aren’t So Sure