{"id":659961,"date":"2026-10-28T21:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T21:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/659961\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T21:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T21:22:14","slug":"how-the-pandemic-changed-trust-in-science-in-four-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/659961\/","title":{"rendered":"How the pandemic changed trust in science \u2014 in four charts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"A male medical worker taking a blood sample from a seated man in a laboratory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/d41586-026-03248-z_53895188.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure__caption u-sans-serif\">Science in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: 22% of participants in that nation said they had \u2018no trust at all\u2019 in science in 2025. Credit: Thomas Imo\/Photothek via Getty<\/p>\n<p>Trust in science and researchers has fallen following the COVID-19 pandemic, the largest survey of public confidence in science shows. Led by the global biomedical funder Wellcome in London and published on 10 October, it explores how people feel about science and health \u2014 including vaccines, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-022-01312-y\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-022-01312-y\" data-track-category=\"body text link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">pandemic preparedness<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-026-00246-z\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-026-00246-z\" data-track-category=\"body text link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">clean energy<\/a> and, for the first time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-026-01557-x\" data-track=\"click\" data-label=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-026-01557-x\" data-track-category=\"body text link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">artificial intelligence<\/a> (see \u2018Trust in decline\u2019). <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"TRUST IN DECLINE: Barchart of survey results showing that trust in science has receded between 2018 and 2025.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/d41586-026-03248-z_53908402.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe should be paying attention to, and thinking about, what needs to be done to earn that trust,\u201d says Philippa Michael, head of public initiatives at Wellcome, who led the project. This is the third survey of its kind conducted by Wellcome, following editions in 2018 and 2020. <\/p>\n<p>The analysis points to a \u201cmixed\u201d picture that varies between countries and regions, says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a specialist in science communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (see \u2018Regional differences\u2019).<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"REGIONAL DIFFERENCES: graph of survey results by geographics region between 2018 and 2025, showing that trust in science rose only in Europe.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/d41586-026-03248-z_53908400.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The study also shows a connection between science and people\u2019s broader experiences, including their perceived financial security, says Michael (see \u2019Money matters\u2018).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf people feel economically insecure, then they\u2019re going to feel a greater distance between themselves and science and scientists,\u201d says sociologist Gordon Gauchat, at Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This disconnect \u201cis not about science\u2019s efficacy or its ability to fix problems\u201d, he adds.<\/p>\n<p>The survey found that countries where people reported high confidence in hospitals and health-care clinics were \u201cmore likely to have greater trust in science\u201d, notes Michael. Levels of trust were also high in respondents who were confident in accessing health-care services when needed. \u201cIt\u2019s really essential that science is credible, relevant and beneficial to people in their lives,\u201d Michael adds. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"MONEY MATTERS: graph of survey results showing that people living in economic comfort reported greater trust in science than those finding it difficult to get by between 2018 and 2025.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/d41586-026-03248-z_53908398.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Science in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: 22% of participants in that nation said they had \u2018no&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,4068,85,46,4069,141,22532,5087],"class_list":["post-659961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-multidisciplinary","tag-science","tag-scientific-community","tag-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}