Cultivating Trust in Science:

A Central Role for Journalism in Democracy

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Often the question, “How can we convince the public to trust scientists?” guides discourse about trust in science. Instead, with growing distrust of scientists among both marginalized groups and conservatives, we should ask, “How can scientists earn the diverse public’s trust?” The answer, I argue, lies in a characteristic shared by both science and democracy: responsiveness. Informed by empirical studies on science communication and my decade-long career as a science journalist, I’m developing what I call the Responsiveness Model of Trust in Science. Pushing back against standard models that ground trust in scientists’ authority as objective knowers (e.g. Oreskes and Conway, 2010), the model aims to foster warranted trust in the many cases when policy-relevant science is uncertain and value-laden. It does so by requiring scientists to respond to alternative hypotheses (epistemic responsiveness) and the public’s values (political responsiveness) to warrant their trust. The model also requires journalists to verify and communicate whether scientists are being properly responsive, thereby acting as the public’s watchdogs. In my dissertation, I use the Responsiveness Model in three different chapters to resolve problems in philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, and applied ethics. 

 

In Chapter 1, which was recently published in Synthese, I point out that journalists are often the public’s central source of scientific information, which means that their reporting shapes the public’s relationship with science. Yet philosophers of science largely ignore journalistic communication in their inquiries about trust in science. To fill this gap in research, I compare journalistic norm conflicts that arose when reporting on COVID-19 and tobacco, among other policy-relevant scientific topics. I argue that the public’s image of scientists – as depositories of indisputable, value-free facts, trustworthy only when in consensus – makes it difficult for journalists to ethically communicate policy-relevant science rife with disagreement. In doing so, I show how journalists, like scientists, face the problem of inductive risk in such cases. To overcome this problem, I sketch the Responsiveness Model, which is grounded in an alternative image of scientists, namely those who are responsive to empirical evidence and the public’s values. This chapter contributes to philosophy of science, social philosophy, and applied ethics. 

 

In Chapter 2, I observe that many philosophers of science now agree that non-epistemic values play an ethically legitimate role in science. However, some question value-laden science’s democratic legitimacy (e.g. Lusk, 2021); that is, why should citizens trust scientists when scientists make value judgments contrary to their own? Here, I first argue that previous solutions to this problem don’t account for the reasonable disagreement in non-epistemic values inherent to democratic societies (e.g. Irzik and Kurtulmus, 2019; Schroeder, 2021). I then outline the Responsiveness Model, arguing that it can account for such reasonable disagreement. I also show how the model can resolve the related ‘epistemic legitimacy problem’ that value-laden science faces; that is, why should citizens trust science when it’s uncertain? Lastly, I show how the model is unique in that it takes what political philosophers call a systemic, instead of local, deliberative democratic approach to show why scientists and journalists must work together to legitimate science (e.g. Mansbridge et al. 2012). This chapter contributes to philosophy of science and social and political philosophy.

 

In Chapter 3, I start by noting that the theory of public reason says that the reasons justifying coercive policies must be shared by all citizens. Yet the picture is complicated when it comes to scientific reasons: (1) Most citizens’ lack of scientific expertise prevents them from understanding, let alone agreeing with, scientific reasons; (2) Even if they do understand, citizens might reasonably disagree with the non-epistemic value judgments philosophers now argue pervade science (e.g. Kogelmann and Stich, 2021). Using the Responsiveness Model, I overcome these issues to resolve this conflict between public reason and science-based policymaking. To (1), I respond: Citizens don’t need to be scientific experts: They need journalists to translate the scientific reasons for them. To (2), I argue scientists may not share reasons, but they do share an evaluative standard, namely epistemic responsiveness. Still, many citizens can’t assess whether scientists are epistemically responsive, which brings us back to (1). This is where journalists come in: They can evaluate whether scientists are being epistemically responsive and then report that to the public. This chapter contributes to social and political philosophy.