How many times have you heard “trust the science” or “trust the doctors?” Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, those three-word catchphrases often descended into a political signal. Unfortunately, questioning a conclusion often meant challenging an expert’s credibility. One of the many unsettling experiences of the last two years has been witnessing the sort of medical research usually only seen in popcorn movies like Contagion. As the public watched theories about everything from viral spread to vaccinations being put to the test, it often felt like watching the production of sausage. The other challenge is that when research yields consistent, reproducible results, it’s up to experts to clearly convey the information. So do most of us trust them? Do we trust our spiritual leaders more? Are we skeptical or gullible? To put these questions to the test, researchers conducted an online examination. Here’s what they found.
Our Trusting History
In a column in Nature entitled “Scientific progress is built on failure,” medical researcher Eileen Parkes noted that learning to handle those failures is an important part of being a scientist. As Parkes wrote, “Science is high-stakes. We all fail and experience rejection much more often than we do success.” Scientific and medical research are about testing theory after theory until something works.
Yet even when theories are proven, communicating them to non scientists can be challenging — and that was pre-COVID. Today challenging doesn’t even do justice to the pushback directives and mandates have received, partly because as Kavita Patel, MD, a primary care physician at Mary’s Center, a community health center in Silver Spring, Maryland, points out, “We’ve never had a time where we’ve had, in a pretty rapid fashion, preprint articles that are coming out with no peer review, and because of the internet and social media, findings become front-page headlines literally within minutes. We’ve never had that at the same time we’re trying to develop policy to deal with those scientific findings; it’s just never happened before.”
It’s an open question whether or not scientists should be given authority over public health decisions including the force of law. But, significantly, with all that has happened, do we trust scientists?
The Study
Our collective history is built on trust. Our ancestors didn’t personally know that there was better land across an ocean or opportunity across the country. They trusted those who went before them. Similarly, major religions are built on trust, as spiritual icons from Moses to Muhammad told followers that they’d had divine instruction. Today information (and misinformation) is available with the touch of a keystroke. So whom do we trust, the scientist or the guru?
Examining the results of over 10,000 responses to an online questionnaire, researchers discovered something surprising. Confronted with a statement they described as “gobbledegook,” secular people were more likely to believe it if it was delivered by a scientist rather than a guru. Yet religious folks were also more likely to believe the scientist (although just slightly more likely). Examining other studies, the researchers discovered similar results. Overall, people are less skeptical than we may think and despite the controversy surrounding COVID-19 experts, we really do trust scientists. The researchers called this “the Einstein effect.” After all, how many of us can explain E=mc2? Yet far more people trust that the equation is correct because we trust Albert Einstein and the legion of scientists who followed him and relied upon his research.
As the researchers pointed out, “From an evolutionary perspective, deference to credible authorities such as teachers, doctors, and scientists is an adaptive strategy that enables effective cultural learning and knowledge transmission. Indeed, if the source is considered a trusted expert, people are willing to believe claims from that source without fully understanding them.” Overall most people in the study weren’t skeptical. Although trust is important, it’s also vital that the source is considered and maybe the latest nerve-wracking headline can be ignored. Still, it’s comforting to know that when important information is delivered by a scientist, most people will listen.
Written by John Bankston
