Earning the public’s trust
WARREN S. WARREN
http://HTTPS://ORCID.ORG/0000-0001-8458-2076SCIENCE ADVANCES • 9 Mar 2022 • Vol 8, Issue 10 • DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abo6347
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
―Bertrand Russell
“Trust science” has become a mantra in recent years—not just from politicians but also from major segments of the scientific community. The phrase misses the point: By and large, people trust science, but many don’t trust scientists. And it is hard to blame them.
Scientific advances have drastically affected (and mostly improved) everyone’s lives. We understand the principle: Intuition is validated by some combination of theoretical, computational, and experimental work to become hypotheses, eventually accepted over competing hypotheses. The process is highly field dependent. For example, muon measurements at Fermilab hint at new subatomic physics with about 99.999% confidence (1). But most of the physics community does not believe that “the science is settled”; they are waiting for further confirmation. Of course, there will be no great harm in waiting a few years for this to happen. In contrast, in biological sciences, 90 or 95% confidence limits are more common; statistical certainty is more difficult. In the face of a pandemic such as COVID-19, time has been of the essence and the evidentiary standards are lower still. Simply put, the scientific community expects to get some things wrong, and has many times along the way.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abo6347
