An anchor in troubled times: Trust in science before and within the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Researchers, policy makers and science communicators have become increasingly been interested in factors that affect public’s trust in science. Recently, one such potentially important driving factor has emerged, the COVID-19 pandemic. Have trust in science and other science-related beliefs changed in Germany from before to during the pandemic? To investigate this, we re-analyzed data from a set of representative surveys conducted in April, May, and November 2020, which were obtained as part of the German survey Science Barometer, and compared it to data from the last annual Science Barometer survey that took place before the pandemic, (in September 2019). Results indicate that German’s trust in science increased substantially after the pandemic began and slightly declined in the months thereafter, still being higher in November 2020 than in September 2019. Moreover, trust was closely related to expectations about how politics should handle the pandemic. We also find that increases of trust were most pronounced among the higher-educated. But as the pandemic unfolded, decreases of trust were more likely among supporters of the populist right-wing party AfD. We discuss the sustainability of these dynamics as well as implications for science communication.

Understanding, Trusting, and Applying Scientific Insights to Improve Your Health: A Latent Profile Analysis Approach

“…In particular, public health messaging may benefit from being directed toward and tailored to individuals who are low in trust in science and/or health literacy. This includes providing reliable, timely, relevant, simple, easy-to-access, and easy-to-use information, as well as enrichening public health messages with information regarding scientists’ expertise, limitations, and their independence from politics [ 51 , 55 , 56 ].…”

Public policy and conspiracies: The case of mandates

“…For example, in Germany the share of people who fully trusted science and research nearly tripled from around 11% in 2017–2019 to over 30% in April and May 2020, and the share of people who trusted science at least partially rose from around 50% to around 70% during the same period [ 55 ]. This increased trust slightly declined from that peak over time, but still remained considerably higher than before the pandemic in late 2020 [ 7 ] and late 2021 [ 56 ]. Similar trends have been observed across the globe: In a survey of the public in 113 countries, overall those who said they trust scientists “a lot” rose from 34% in 2018 to 43% by the end of 2020 [ 54 ].…”

“…For example, 10% – 30% of the British public expressed belief in a variety of conspiracy theories relating to the virus in 2020 [ 18 , 45 ]. In Germany, declining trust was particularly pronounced among supporters of the extreme right AfD party, which eventually aligned itself with outright deniers of the pandemic [ 7 ]. Although the number of people who overtly believe in conspiracy theories falls far short of the majority, the overabundance of misinformation and conspiracy theories [ 14 , 36 ], in particular on social media [ 2 ], must not be trivialized.…”

Science communication in the face of skepticism, populism, and ignorance: what ‘Don’t Look Up’ tells us about science denial — and what it doesn’t

“…The film depicts sharp partisan divides, strong affective polarization, high distrust toward science within certain social milieus, and pronounced news media sensationalism, which have been found to be characteristic of the United States but not, or to a lesser extent, of several countries other than the US [Boxell, Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2020;Dimock & Wike, 2020;Kleemans & Hendriks Vettehen, 2009;McLamore et al, 2022]. Don't Look Up also suggests that societies will generally become more critical toward science when facing catastrophes -which conflicts with evidence showing that existential crises like the COVID-19 pandemic can lead publics to have more trust in science and less populist reservations against it in countries like Germany and Switzerland [Bromme, Mede, Thomm, Kremer & Ziegler, 2022;Mede & Schäfer, 2022]. After all, the film's depiction of US American science denial specifically is limited as well, as it does not acknowledge that US public opinion on science in general [Besley, 2018] or climate change in particular [Chryst et al, 2018] may not split into two polarized groups but spread across multiple nuances.…”