Most Dutch citizens continue to have trust in science How much trust do Dutch citizens have in science? Since 2012, roughly every three years, the Rathenau Instituut has asked a large representative group of Dutch citizens how much trust they have in science and in various aspects of science. In this edition the authors observe that trust in science remains high with an average of 7.5 on a scale from 1 to 10. Beneath this average, however, they see shifts taking place: the group of people with high levels of trust has increased, but so has the group with low levels of trust. The authors see correlations between trust in science and personal factors such as education level, political orientation and spirituality. Moreover, trust in science varies by aspect of science and among research topics. These results are important for scientists, journalists, policy makers and politicians.
Huffnagel-Bastiaans et al. (Mon,) studied this question.