Abi Perrin, Charlie Gardner & Stuart Capstick
Public trust in science is essential to ensure public health and safety, sustainable behaviour changes and support for evidence-based policies. This trust has been consistently high but has begun to break down in some settings.
Recent years have also seen a surge in research and academic interest into public trust in science, stimulated at least partly by scientist involvement in popular climate movements.
Much of this literature focuses on the role of scientists and the potential risk to public trust if scientists engage in advocacy or activism. However, the rationale, motivations and evidence used by scientist activists themselves are often neglected in these discussions.
Here we briefly share some of those perspectives, reflecting on what critiques around the relationships between science, activism and public trust often miss.
Public trust has been intentionally undermined
Arguments that focus primarily on scientists as influencers of public trust often fail to consider other drivers of recent shifts.
Most importantly, they ignore the existence of organised, longstanding efforts to undermine public trust in science. These include industry-driven science denialism from tobacco and fossil fuels to big meat, as well as attacks on integrity of scientists and scientific institutions (e.g. Climategate and the ongoing actions of US political administrations).
Misinformation has proliferated and spread wildly online, and is often amplified by hugely influential individuals who do not have protecting the public at the top of their agendas.
Scientists themselves are not necessarily blameless here: whilst a very small minority have actively contributed to muddying the waters and spreading misinformation (some examples here), the broader scientific community’s reticence or failure to engage proactively, clearly and effectively with wider society has arguably left science more vulnerable to attack.
Passivity carries enormous risk
Various commentaries by high-profile scientists have positioned activism by scientists as misguided or irresponsible. They have argued that it undermines public trust in science, for example because scientists should be 'neutral' (see below).
But what these arguments usually overlook are the huge risks of scientists appearing passive in the face of the existential threats our wider community has been warning about for decades. If, with all the privilege scientists have, we aren't seen to be taking urgent action, how can we expect the same of others? And how can we expect scientists to be trusted, if we aren't aligning our actions and our knowledge?
Science, politics and values are connected
The idea that science is or should be politically neutral does not stand up to much scrutiny. Decisions about what science is funded and thus what questions science seeks to answer are heavily influenced by governments and industries. Many fields, from medicine to conservation science, do not exist to generate knowledge for its own sake, but do so for the betterment of society and its goals.
The evidence generated by science informs our beliefs, including those about the validity and potential harms of specific policy positions: much as pulmonology research shows us that cigarette smoking endangers public health, climate & ecology research shows us that current policies put us firmly on track for catastrophic impacts and devastating loss of life.
While scientists should always be objective in their treatment of data and analysis, this should not be conflated with an obligation to remain silent or value-neutral about the implications of our findings (something which is in any case “unattainable and undesirable”).
So what?
As climate and ecological breakdown and its impacts escalate, the stakes could not be higher: evidence and truth can - and must - inform a collective response that saves lives, whilst a rejection of them can only lead to accelerating division and collapse. Investing in the former requires courage, creativity and action from scientists, and this is what the SoS community exists to empower.
Further reading
Responses to a recent caution around using science-led messaging in campaigns includes our Correspondence to Nature and threads by Aaron Thierry & Joshua Welz
Actions speak louder than words: the case for responsible scientific activism in an era of planetary emergency, Wyatt et al (2024), Royal Society Open Science
Challenging the neutrality myth in climate science and activism, van Eck et al (2024) npj Climate Action
For a recent synthesis of the data on public trust in science see Nature’s recent news item Have people stopped trusting science? The data tell a surprising story
For a summary of the (still limited-in-scope) evidence we have about the impact of scientists as climate activists see Climate advocacy and activism by scientists: A narrative review, Finnerty et al (2026), PLoS Climate
