Originally published on July 28, 2014
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Lobbyists, car salespeople, reporters and members of Congress – all are viewed, rightly or wrongly, as untrustworthy professions. Gallup’s episodic polling of the public’s attitudes towards professions consistently places these disciplines close to the bottom in terms of perceived honesty.
But scientists are having their own public relations problems when it comes to trustworthiness. A Huffington Post/YouGove poll from late last year found that only 36 percent of respondents have “‘a lot’ of trust that information they get from scientists is accurate and reliable.” Another 51 percent said that they trust information spouted by scientists only a little, while 6 percent don’t trust scientists at all. More recently, issues with reproducibility of scientific data have exacerbated the lack of public trust in science. Taken together, those numbers highlight a credibility gap facing scientists.
This gap can’t be explained with a dismissive wave of the
hand that political conservatives and their mistrust of “elites” are to blame
for the bad poll numbers. The trustworthiness problem is much bigger than the
conservative/liberal divide over a narrow subset of issues.
Something else is at play, and the problem in part rests in
the scientific enterprise and how it goes about conducting the research that is
then relayed to the public.
Military leaders are fond of saying that because most
Americans don’t serve in the armed forces, they have very little understanding
of military culture and the unique issues facing those in the armed forces.
This breeds misunderstanding and its corollary – mistrust.
There is a similar phenomenon occurring in science. Inside
the institutions, the various disciplines have become so stovepiped, so highly
specialized, so segregated from the public and each other that they are losing
touch with the community they are seeking to serve and whose problems they are
trying to solve.
Jeanne Garborino, director of science outreach at
Rockefeller University, argues that much more extensive research across
scientific disciplines is required to allow for greater “transparency” – or
public understanding of what is going on inside the laboratories and ivory
towers.
She wrote on Nature.com that “the pace of basic science
research is hastened when researchers from different areas or fields
collaborate. We are sitting at a crossroads where computer scientists and
biologists or chemists and anthropologists can sit together and find new ways
to answer old questions. Or, even better, they can propose questions that have
never been asked.”
“Science needs this type of novelty to survive, but in order
for this novelty to exist and thrive, we need more transparency. There is no
scientific crystal ball. If we are not sharing our findings early and on a much
wider scale, we reduce our chances of finding that connection that could
transform that Hail Mary fishing expedition into a clearly mapped out journey
toward scientific success,” she wrote.
She’s right. More thoughtful research that crosses
disciplines, that is transparently shared far and wide with the public and
scientific community alike, and that addresses humanity’s most pressing
problems will help restore trust with a leery public.