Jun 26th 2025|5 min read
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EARLIER THIS month, Robert F. Kennedy junior, America’s health secretary, removed the panel of 17 experts who decide the country’s vaccination guidelines. He later replaced them with eight of his own picks (one has since withdrawn), several of whom are vaccine sceptics and scientists without expertise in the field of vaccine research.
Mr Kennedy justified the move as a way of rebuilding trust in the nation’s public-health institutions. Is he right to raise these concerns? At first blush, the data seem equivocal. The share of people who place “a lot” of trust in scientific institutions has increased since 2019 in countries like America, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Spain. But, over the same period, the share who say they have no trust at all has also risen starkly, more than doubling in some places.
The latter trend is worrying. For one thing, people who distrust science are less likely to follow public-health advice. “A lack of confidence in vaccines is an early warning that a drop in vaccine uptake is likely to follow,” says Heidi Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project and professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Dodging jabs is not just risky for those who shun them. If too few people are protected, viruses can spread quickly throughout populations. Three people have died of measles in America this year, and in 2024 cases in Europe hit their highest levels in decades thanks to falling childhood vaccination rates. In America alone it is estimated that between January 2021 and April 2022, around 318,000 people died as a result of either postponing or refusing their covid-19 vaccinations.
The covid-19 pandemic represents a turning point in attitudes towards science globally. Although the pandemic initially gave trust in science a boost, according to two long-running surveys, confidence dropped in the aftermath. A paper published in PLOS Global Public Health this week finds that Americans’ confidence in their public-health institutions has still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. It is not hard to understand why. Throughout the pandemic, prestigious institutions made mistakes (for instance, at the beginning of 2020 the World Health Organisation said that covid-19 was unequivocally not an airborne disease) and governments used science to justify poor policy decisions. At the same time, however, scientists were also making huge advances, not least in immunology and biotechnology, as they raced to develop vaccines in record time.
Chart: The Economist
A key determinant of how people experienced these events was their political affiliation. Many on the political right tend to frown on government interference in their lives, for example, whereas those on the left think it is right for scientists to work closely with politicians to shape policy. In America the pandemic inspired more confidence in science among Democrats, at least temporarily, while the views of Republicans soured (see chart 1). In Europe, too, the gap between left and right has widened. In 2010 left-leaning Europeans, surveyed as part of a Eurobarometer study—a regular poll conducted by the eu—were five percentage points more likely to say that understanding science is important for everyday life than those who leant right. In the 2024 survey the gap had widened to 12 points.
In a survey of 72,000 people in 68 countries published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour earlier this year, aspects of an individual’s ideology were among the strongest predictors of their level of trust in science. Globally, people who leant conservative were slightly more likely to distrust science. In Europe and America the difference was much larger. An even stronger predictor was people’s so-called “social-dominance orientation”—the degree to which people believe that some groups are inherently superior to others—a mindset that researchers have linked to support for populist parties.
The rise of anti-science politicians has exacerbated matters. Jon Miller, a political scientist at the University of Michigan who has surveyed the American public’s views of science for decades, points out that many people do not follow science closely. If political parties turn against science, or particular scientific practices, then so too do many of their supporters. “The degree to which believing health misinformation is now about political identity is astounding,” says Timothy Caulfield, a professor of law at the University of Alberta.
Chart: The Economist
While America’s anti-science fringe makes global headlines, mistrust is also high elsewhere. Europe, for example, is home to plenty of anti-science sentiment—in France, even lefties are less trusting than American conservatives (see chart 2, next page). Overall, trust appears to be lowest in places like Albania, Kazakhstan and Russia, reflecting low trust in institutions of all kinds, and highest in developing countries like Nigeria and India.
One consolation is that, for now at least, the sceptics remain a minority. The Nature Human Behaviour study also found that, globally, 75% of people agreed scientific methods were the best way to evaluate truth. Overall, no country distrusted scientists on net. In surveys scientists, in particular medical ones, are consistently ranked as the most trusted institutional leaders (though this may be because other leaders are so despised). This week’s study in PLOS Global Public Health found that confidence in local doctors in October 2024 was close to what it was in May 2020.
Nonetheless, scientists are thinking hard about how to improve the situation. Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard, says that scientists need to step outside the laboratory and explain to the public the benefits their work has for society. Dr Caulfield, meanwhile, emphasises the importance of clearly defining the scientific consensus: communicating what scientists agree on and where there is uncertainty. And where there is hesitancy about vaccines, Dr Larson points out there are often local issues at play.
Unfortunately, Mr Kennedy’s moves to “restore trust” risk making things worse. Experts expect they will confuse the public, undermine confidence in health institutions and increase polarisation. “He started the fire and now he’s fired the firefighters,” says Dr Caulfield. The public appears to share his concerns. A poll conducted by Pew just before Mr Kennedy dismissed the vaccine panel showed almost twice as many Americans strongly disapproved of his actions than strongly approved. That mistrust may be infectious. On June 23rd, the Republican senator responsible for Mr Kennedy’s nomination said the new panel should be staffed with “more robust and balanced representation”, and called for its first meeting to be postponed. They met all the same. ■
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This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Beyond doubt”
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