The Science of Trust in Science: COVID-19 and Its Implications for “Trust”

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the issue of trust in science. The relationship between science and society in the context of the pandemic crisis has been ambivalent, oscillating between trust and mistrust in science. In this work, a scoping review is carried out with the aim of analyzing the academic production about trust in science in the current context of global crisis. Following the usual procedure for Cochrane Reviews, the document search and filtering process is followed by a quantitative synthesis of the characteristic notes of the research. Finally, a thematic analysis of the contents of the documents is carried out. The main results suggest that (1) variables such as political ideology and conspiracy beliefs are strong predictors of trust in science, (2) trust in science is the most potent variable in explaining social adherence to health recommendations of experts, and (3) levels of general trust in science have fallen since the start of the pandemic. These results must be put in context, according to the limitations of the research. However, potentially useful information is provided for decision makers in emergency contexts.