Honesty about risk is key to public trust in science

In an interesting speech at this year’s British Science Festival, Lord Sainsbury argued that scientists must be open about the risks involved in new research if they are going to win the public’s trust. 

His starting point was trying to answer the question of why it is that the public seem to be more suspicious about science the more they know about it. It is common to assume that the root of distrust is a lack of understanding; if only the public were more knowledgeable about scientific progress they would welcome it with open arms. However, he quoted a study which found that countries which scored lowest on scientific understanding were in general the most enthusiastic about its benefits too. A well educated public, he concluded, will ask questions. We can’t solve the problem of public trust just by improving science education then.

The only option, he argued, is to have a genuine public dialogue and in particular a dialogue about risk. To do this, we need to understand public attitudes to risk. He identified some key criteria which determine how likely people are to take risks. People are bolder, apparently, if they feel they are in control. They also want to know that the uncertainty is outweighed by the potential benefit. And finally, they need to feel sure that their decisions are based on trusted information about the risks and that the government has been honest and will regulate and mitigate risks when appropriate. A similar argument was made earlier this year in the Science and Trust Expert Group report, where they identified openness about risk as one of the most important ingredient for trust between science and the public. Most importantly, though they argued that building trust was an ongoing process, and about building people’s ability to debate scientific issues in a more informed way. The upshot of this is that if scientists and policy makers want people to be open to new science, the worst course of action would be to downplay the unknowns.