February 12, 2025

Athens News

News in English from Greece

Study: Do Greeks Trust Their Scientists?


Research in 68 countries, including Greece, showed how much Greeks trust domestic scientists.

The results, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviors, showed that the public trusts scientists and wants them to become more involved in society and policy making.

In the survey 71,922 people took partit is the largest global collection of data on trust in scientists since the Covid-19 pandemic. As it turns out, most of the population has relatively high trust in scientists: The average level of trust across all countries is 3.62 (on a scale of 1 – very low trust, 5 – very high trust).

No country shows low trust in scientists, but there are notable differences between countries and regions. Egypt tops the list (4.30), followed by India, Nigeria, Kenya and Australia. Citizens show the least trust in scientists in Ethiopia, Russia, Bolivia, Kazakhstan and Albania (3.05). Greece is in 56th place with a below average level of trust at 3.39. Slightly higher than Greece (52nd place) is Cyprus (3.42).

Survey participants believe writes newsbeast.gr publication that scientists are capable of conducting highly effective research (78%), are honest (57%) and care about the well-being of people (56%). At the same time, 52% of respondents note that scientists should be more actively involved in the policy-making process. And 75% believe that scientific research methods are the best way to find out whether something is true or false.

Less than half of respondents (42%) believe that scientists pay attention to the opinions of others, and 83% want scientists to communicate science to the public. The results show that Many people in different countries believe that the priorities of science do not always coincide with their own priorities.

Respondents would like to see priority given to research related to improving public health, solving energy problems and reducing poverty. Instead, they do not prioritize research into the development of defense and military technologies, and believe that science pays more attention to these two areas than they would like.



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