Americans have regained modest trust in scientists, finds survey

For the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the public's trust in scientists has improved, according to a survey published Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

About 76% of Americans say they have confidence that scientists act in the public's best interest, a modest but significant improvement from last year but about 10 points lower than the figure before the pandemic.

This year's uptick was driven largely by a slight increase in trust among Republicans, a group that also experienced the steepest drop in confidence during the pandemic, said Alec Tyson, a Pew researcher and the report's lead author.

Still, the roughly 9,500 Americans surveyed were divided over whether scientists should play a role in policy decisions -- a particularly timely issue now as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to appoint leaders of the country's science and health agencies.

About half of the survey respondents said experts should take "an active role" in policy debates about scientific issues, like childhood vaccines and climate change, while the other half said they should focus instead on "establishing sound scientific facts."

Respondents were largely split along partisan lines: 67% of Democrats believed scientists should be involved in policy debates, compared with just 35% of Republicans.

Past surveys have shed some light on this divide. During the pandemic, many Republicans reported feeling that scientists' personal views biased their policy decisions and that they too quickly dismissed views that countered their research.

In contrast, Democrats are more likely to believe that scientists make judgments "based solely on the facts."

The numbers published Thursday might indicate that the pandemic's most polarizing issues -- like school closures and mask mandates -- are fading from the public consciousness, Tyson said.

The survey still found scientists had reputational "room for improvement," he added, particularly when it comes to how well they communicate with the public and the perception among nearly half of respondents that scientists "feel superior to others."

Sudip Parikh, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, acknowledged that scientists had learned hard lessons during the pandemic about how to talk about science, and said they were now better equipped to communicate how data changes and evolves.

Recent high-profile medical and scientific advancements -- like the new gene therapy for sickle cell and ambitious space exploration missions -- have done the most to rebuild confidence in scientific institutions, he added.

"Those kinds of demonstrations of the power of science for good, I think, does help build trust," Parikh said.

Overall, scientists are in good standing compared with other professions that have taken reputational hits in recent years, including journalists and elected officials. Ratings are even slightly more favorable than they are for such well-trusted professionals as public school principals and police officers.

Parikh said he was cautiously optimistic that trust in science would continue to improve but said the Trump administration's picks for leaders of agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health would set the tone for the next four years.

"The personnel that they choose for those science agencies will tell us volumes about where we're going to go," he said, adding, "I'm looking for the leaders of the science agencies to be scientists."