UvA psychologists published the results of the research in the journal PLOS ONE. How can the differences between scientists be explained? Folia asked PhD student and first author Vukašin Gligorić.
Trust in science differs per scientist. No surprise after all?
‘No, but it had not been demonstrated before. Most research into trust in science lumps all scientists together, while making a distinction between scientists. For example, people think that neuroscientists are more competent than sociologists and that marine biologists are warmer and more honest than other scientists. We wanted to investigate whether these differences also applied to trust. In the study we distinguished 45 types of scientists and asked almost three thousand Americans to indicate their confidence per type of scientist on a scale of 1 to 7.’
Epidemiologists, virologists, medical researchers, immunologists, environmental and data scientists score high, while economists and political scientists score low on trust. How can you explain that?
‘It might be a good idea to first say that the differences in trust between scientists are not that great and that all scientists scored quite high. Moreover, the degree of trust varies more per participant than per scientist: participants who had little confidence in one type of scientist also had less confidence in other types.’
‘What was striking is that political scientists and economists could count on the least confidence. This probably has to do with stereotypes about researchers and political ideology: I think that people are generally not happy with the current political and economic system and that does not contribute to trust.’
