<p>As society grapples with a deluge of information, the role of experts in guiding public opinion and decision-making becomes both a conceptual and a normative puzzle. This paper examines the value of epistemic trust in the context of laypersons forming beliefs based on expert testimony. To do so, I first differentiate epistemic trust in experts from mere reliance. I contend that trust involves normative expectations and preemptive reasons in a way that mere reliance doesn’t. I then apply this conceptualization to the relationship between laypersons and experts who work within public institutions, whom I term ‘public experts.’ I suggest that laypersons are often warranted in forming the normative expectations central to trust towards such experts because of their social role. The central contribution of the paper is to argue that well-placed epistemic trust in public experts is more valuable than mere reliance because it offers greater resistance to sophisticated disinformation prevalent in our cognitive environments. This is because epistemic trust gives the trustor a reason to have strongly held beliefs that aren’t easily swayed by deceptive first-order evidence, while reliance on other agents can only foster strong beliefs more vulnerable to such evidence.</p>