Teemu Lari, a member of the board of the Young Academy Finland, participated in the Strengthening Public Trust in Science conference, organised by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and Science Europe, in Paris. In this article, he reflects on the challenges and open questions associated with increasing trust in science.
For science to help promote human well-being and solve societal problems, people need to have sufficient trust in it. However, many developments and events threaten this trust. The changing media environment and new technologies, the dissemination and spread of disinformation and misinformation, and factors related to the coronavirus pandemic and its treatment raise questions about how the status of science and trust in it can be defended. The Strengthening Public Trust in Science conference, held in Paris in December 2025, brought together people from national and international science organizations, national ministries, media organizations, universities, and international political organizations, among others, to discuss these issues. In this article, I reflect on the key topics discussed at the conference and what could have been discussed further.
How to talk about the same topic?
What are we talking about when we talk about trust in science? The expression can mean different things, and mixing them up can lead to people talking at cross-purposes. This was sometimes the case at the Paris conference. When hearing the word ‘science’, one person may think of the natural sciences, while another may think of both the natural and the social sciences. Science sometimes refers to all organized research activities, including, for example, research and development work carried out in companies, while at other times it refers specifically to research carried out within academic institutions. And are we talking about trust in scientific knowledge, i.e., the facts produced by science, or trust in the advice and recommendations made in the light of those facts? These distinctions, among others, should be kept in mind when studying the extent to which people trust science and when discussing how this trust could be supported.
“And are we talking about trust in scientific knowledge, i.e., the facts produced by science, or trust in the advice and recommendations made in the light of those facts?”
Another fundamental question is the current state of trust in science. Several speakers at the conference pointed out that, according to studies, science continues to be trusted by the majority. According to these studies, there is no clear “crisis” of trust. On the other hand, certain questioning and belittling of science seems to be particularly prominent currently. What is the reason for this contradiction? One possible explanation is that the people who trust and distrust science have changed, and the visibility of different opinions on science may also have changed. Even if the number of people who trust science is the same as before, various views expressing distrust are also being expressed by those in positions of political power around the world, and as the media landscape becomes increasingly fragmented, different views that question research-based information may be gaining more visibility than before. Trust is also differentiated: for example, some groups of people are sceptical about vaccines, while others do not trust climate research.
The changing media environment
There was much discussion at the conference about how the rise of social media and other changes in the dissemination of information, such as state-backed information operations, affect trust in science and how these phenomena should be addressed. Social media has fundamentally changed the channels through which especially young people obtain knowledge – and information that looks like knowledge – and it has changed who gets to select and present this information. The most popular social media content creators have hundreds of millions of followers, and on average, people use social media for more than two hours a day (which, of course, varies greatly depending on country, age, and individual), so what kind of content is shared on social media matters a lot.
How should the scientific community approach social media and its developments? The conference raised the idea that academia could strengthen its relationships not only with representatives of traditional media but also with social media influencers. Perhaps we should accept the changed rules of the game and work to promote trust in science where possible and effective? We cannot prevent the views and information disseminated by influencers from being a key part of many people’s media diet, but perhaps we could somehow influence their attitudes towards science and what they think and know about, for example, climate or nutrition science. One of the speakers at the conference mentioned that the major public administration organization he represented had invited influencers for a visit so that they could understand how the organization works.
Transparency
At this event, as is often the case elsewhere, many speakers emphasized the importance of transparency and openness in increasing trust in science. Transparency and openness are frequently called for in relation to research methods, funding, data, uncertainty, and disagreements.
The proposals certainly sound good, but perhaps we should pay more attention to how much evidence there is on the relationship between transparency and openness on the one hand, and trust in science on the other. At least at this conference, no clear evidence was presented to suggest that people who are skeptical of science, or of certain parts of it, are so because of some sort of transparency issues.
Furthermore, we must ask to what extent and in what ways it is genuinely possible to increase transparency and openness. Useful transparency and openness also require something from the audience, i.e., those towards whom one tries to be transparent and open. In other words, transparency can only be truly achieved if something is “put on display” and the “looking party” is also able to correctly interpret what they see. For example, I do not benefit much from the fact that data produced by NASA’s satellite measurements is openly available, because I do not have the knowledge required to use and interpret this data. This example may be exaggerated, but the principle also applies to the transparency of funding. It is not always easy to assess what information about research funders tells us about the reliability of research.
“One of the recurring topics of discussion at the conference was the need to increase the general public’s understanding of the ‘processual nature’ of science.”
In the context of transparency, uncertainties related to research are also often discussed. Honesty in the face of uncertainties, errors, and the limits of knowledge is sometimes seen as a way to increase trust in science. Such openness is certainly desirable for many reasons, but its relationship to trust is not entirely clear-cut. The audience’s perceptions of science and research may influence how information about errors and uncertainties is received. Transparency reveals something to the viewer, such as uncertainties. This revealed “something” may or may not be compatible with what the viewer thinks good science is. Only in the former case can transparency be assumed to increase trust. That is why it is important to increase understanding of what good science really is. One of the recurring topics of discussion at the conference was the need to increase the general public’s understanding of the “processual nature” of science. There should be a widely shared understanding that uncertainty, mistakes, criticism, and incompleteness are an essential part of science. The reliability of science is based on the fact that the incompleteness of knowledge motivates research, mistakes are learned from, and criticism is presented and dealt with constructively.
This text is a machine translation of the Finnish original, checked by the author.
