Trust in science falls fastest among those left behind

[LAGOS, SciDev.Net] Poor access to healthcare, limited local influence over research priorities, and an unequal distribution of scientific benefits are undermining public confidence in science, experts warn, following the release of a global trust survey.

The Wellcome Global Monitor 2026 surveyed more than 140,000 people in 140 countries in 2025 and found that trust in science had fallen below pre-pandemic levels.

To track changes over time, researchers compared results from 108 countries surveyed in 2018, 2020 and 2025. The proportion of respondents expressing at least some trust in science fell from 77 per cent in 2018 to 72 per cent in 2025, after rising to 80 per cent during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Over the same period, those reporting little or no trust in science rose from 13 per cent in both 2018 and 2020 to 19 per cent in 2025.

Trust in scientists themselves also declined. The share of people expressing “a lot” of trust in scientists dropped to 32 per cent in 2025, down from 34 per cent in 2018 and 43 per cent in 2020.

“There isn’t a crisis or a wholesale collapse,” said Mark Henderson, executive director of corporate affairs and engagement at Wellcome, presenting the findings at the World Health Summit in Berlin on Monday (12 October).

He added: “There is a substantial base of trust. But there’s also movement and there’s fragility underneath the surface.”

The findings show a growing gap between people’s expectations of science and their experiences of its benefits. Trust was lowest among people struggling financially and higher among those who had confidence in their local healthcare institutions.

Overall, 26 per cent of respondents said they trusted science “a lot”. But this rose to 43 per cent among those who said they had a lot of confidence in their country’s hospitals and health clinics.

Globally, 39 per cent of people who said they were living comfortably trusted science “a lot”, compared with 20 per cent of those struggling financially.

Evelyn Gitau, chief scientific officer at the Science for Africa Foundation, who also spoke at the launch event, told SciDev.Net: “It’s people saying: my life is hard, and while I know science can fix it, it’s not fixing it. So I have no trust.”

Perceptions of who benefits from research also varied. Although 81 per cent of respondents said scientific work benefits people like them, only 36 per cent said it benefits most people in their country. One in five said science benefits very few people.

John Besley, a science communication scholar at Michigan State University in the United States, who was not involved in the report, told SciDev.Net: “The research says we need to do more than just tell people about benefits.

“To build trust, scientists need to demonstrate they are listening, acting with integrity, and doing research that meets real needs.”

Philippa Michael, head of public initiatives at Wellcome, said the Monitor identifies where trust has fallen but does not explain why.

She told SciDev.Net: “We shouldn’t expect or ask for [trust]. We need to earn it.

“It’s a long-term effort, and absolutely not something which can be assumed or asked for in the middle of a response situation.”

Africa: ‘needs unmet’

The global averages mask regional differences, however. Parts of Africa did not see the pandemic-era boost in trust experienced in other places.

“The pandemic didn’t actually change the trajectory for us,” said Gitau, pointing to barriers such as shortages of the BCG vaccine for tuberculosis and unequal access to COVID-19 vaccines.

In Kenya, for example, she said people encountered online registration barriers and supply constraints linked to global vaccine distribution.

She added: “This loss of trust is not a miscommunication thing. It’s not even an education thing.

“It’s: if it’s so hard to get them, it’s not for us, and science clearly doesn’t address our needs.”

Gitau said skepticism often reflects frustration over the influences shaping research agendas, rather than doubts about science itself.

“It’s not because people don’t believe science works. It’s the question of whose priorities these are,” she said, stressing the importance of locally led research and community engagement.

Gitau urged science funding agencies in Africa to set research priorities in line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

Michael added that Wellcome—a major funder of health research in Africa—has a responsibility to foster trust, including by supporting locally led research.

Western Asia: ‘stark disparities’

Similar tensions also arise in Western Asia, where countries differ sharply in research investment, political stability and access to scientific advances.

“While Saudi Arabia and the UAE invest heavily in artificial intelligence and scientific research, countries such as Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Palestine face severe instability,” said Tarek Kabil, professor emeritus of biotechnology at Cairo University and a lead author of the Arab States chapter of the UNESCO Science Report.

“Such inequalities may undermine trust among people who feel disconnected from scientific progress.”

Algeria illustrates how trust and perceptions of research benefits can move in different directions. Trust rose between 2018 and 2020 before declining in 2025, while the share of people who believe research benefits most people continued to increase, surpassing the global average.

Kabil says research in the region is often slow to inform policy, communication lacks transparency, and science is sometimes politicised to justify poorly understood government decisions.

Without transparency and public engagement, he warned, institutions “risk leaving a vacuum filled by misinformation and rumours on social media”.

Latin America: ‘Not a crisis of confidence’

In Latin America, trends vary between countries. In Brazil, the share of people expressing at least some trust in science rose from 64 per cent in 2018 to 74 per cent in 2025, after peaking at 76 per cent in 2020. In Chile, it reached 81 per cent in 2020 before falling to 63 per cent in 2025.

Carmelo Polino, a lecturer at the University of Oviedo in Spain who has worked on science perception surveys across Latin America, said the decline “does not signify a widespread crisis of confidence”.

He said Chile’s latest national survey data showed that a large percentage of people still expected to see significant future benefits from science and technology.

Commenting on the Global Monitor’s findings, he said: “We must not mistake such reservations for a rejection of science.

“People can acknowledge the authority of scientific knowledge while simultaneously questioning how its benefits are shared.”

In a region shaped by inequality, Polino believes the challenge is “how to make science more accessible, participatory and socially relevant”.

Wellcome plans to publish qualitative research on the drivers of trust in selected countries in autumn 2027. The research will explore the experiences and perceptions behind the survey findings.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.