Thinking about trust often calls to mind scenarios like this:1. Colleagues, professors in the hall, complaining about their classes and how 'students never understand X' (where X could be anything from the difference between meiosis and mitosis to how to write a convincing argument).2. Or scientist colleagues wondering how 'people could be so stupid' to think X (where X could be something like the rumor that vaccines are part of a plot to plant nanochips inside us).Trust is about human relationships, and human relationships are about communication-twoway communication. So, to colleagues in the scenarios above, one might gently suggest that if trust and communication is breaking down, perhaps it's as much, or at least partly, their fault.Human relationships are the Atlas shoulders supporting our world of trust. That trust, those human relationships, have been increasingly shaky lately; the world is wobbling. Simplistically put, everything relies on trust-politics, economies, law, families, science, all our core institutions. While the complex Atlassian balancing acts of sustaining trust in functioning communities and societies is nothing new, the landscape and challenge set have shifted. The experiment in unlimited access to information failed to deliver its promise of widespread enlightenment. Instead, it has all too often been hijacked by opportunists who sow discord for advertising dollars, and by self-proclaimed soothsayers and pundits who find audiences willing to imbibe unfiltered, unvetted messages.Even since we began planning this special issue nearly two years ago, the degree to which trust is breaking down globally seems to have amplified. The situation is dire; science and biomedicine, for just one of many examples, cannot proceed without the financial and literal participation of others in clinical studies.We thought we'd dip our toes in this morass to, if nothing else, continue to catalyze what we see as the rich, interdisciplinary conversations vital to stabilizing Atlas a bit. Thus, this special issue: The Erosion of Trust in the 21st Century: Origins, Implications, and Solutions, where we, a philosopher, natural scientists, and a political scientist invited others to share their research and insights. As it happens, most of the articles, perhaps not surprisingly, are about how we, the experts, the scholars, the professors in the hallway, can better fulfill our roles and input to the twoway story that is trust.How can we rethink our framing of trust? How can we innovate approaches, practices and pedagogies, that foster rebuilding trust in the modern era? Here, we present a brief synthesis and introduction to this collection that features a diversity of scholars and practitioners from across the world, identifying central themes that integrate and facilitate.The collection includes works that fall broadly into four topic categories ( 1 highlights that the trust crisis is indeed pervasive, broadly afflicting the gamut of communities, institutions and practices. The titles also offer a measure of justified optimism that we can not only better understand how trust collapsed, but that there are avenues and tools that can help us to begin rebuilding trust, together.The first category of articles probes the bedrock issue of overall trust in science. In their perspective article Teaching trust in science: a critical new focus for science education, Bruce Alberts, a former president of the National Academy of Sciences, and colleagues recall how the COVID-19 pandemic revealed expanding distrust in science. They propose corrective strategies refocusing efforts to teach the scientific process at all levels of science education, thus building the understanding that when employed properly, scientific principles and practices such as independent replication, blinded analysis, and peer review allow science to be an inherently selfcorrecting and trustworthy endeavor. Advancing beyond the core process of science, Horton et al investigate interactions between trust and credibility in conservation science. Their analysis suggests credibility and trust are enhanced when scientists combine technical excellence with genuine goodwill, honesty, and mutual vulnerability. The impact of these more human considerations is further amplified under the next theme in the collection, biomedical research and public health.Yarborough presents a historical analysis of the modern biomedical research endeavor (pre-COVID-19). Beyond the noble efforts and successes, he also chronicles sufficient failures of trust and accountability to conclude that the public has legitimate reason for skepticism. To improve the landscape, he offers a set or targeted reforms. Blom et al also explore challenges in clinical research and reinforce the criticality of transparent communication, participant empowerment and ethical governance. Further, they advocate for a Clinical Research Liaison role to better bridge the divide between researchers and communities. Reck et al, moving to the specific challenge of biomedical research in rural communities, present original research conducted in rural Georgia where mistrust of outsiders and researchers is a common barrier to trust. They found that sincere, meaningful engagements with families and communities built trusting relationships that significantly improved recruitment and retention in this population. Finally, Kalulu's scoping review of trust and trust repair in public health identifies that, of the 194 relevant studies published from 1990 to 2023, 86% were published in the brief period since the COVID-19 pandemic, with trust in government being most frequently studied.Another innovative group of scholars produce a selection of novel concrete, on-the-ground tools and practices to improve trust. Kattumana and Larson's fascinating perspective article unpacks narratives from two separate communities with distrust of health systems born out of a history of marginalization and discrimination. These troubled pasts ultimately produced trusted third-party advocacy groups and institutions, and these organizations became effective partners to facilitate vaccination rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, Meyer et al unveil the S-TIMHSS metric. It effectively assesses doctors, healthcare systems, and healthcare policy using a n effective 18item scale vs. the standard 38 item TIMHSS metric. Finally, Yudin offers an inventive, practical concept to move "Beyond the lone voice" of single figureheads by building community-based expert panels of qualified scientists to transparently convey varying levels of consensus.The final category, delving into foundational and metalevel aspects of trust, is both as diverse as it is insightful. Nascimiento et al opens with a systematic review of migrant, immigrant, and refugee trust in social institutions of their host countries. Their noteworthy findings reinforce the essential nature of trust-building for effective integration. Hadler et al analyze relationships between generalized and online trust in five countries, reporting that generalized trust was indeed the strongest predictor of online trust. Miao et al. present another article on trust and the internet. Here, the authors report that internet use drives declining social trust. Closing out this topic area is a deeply philosophical two-article series from Nie. His first piece proposes a framework based on Confucian notions of xin (trust) to guide a constructive inquiry into COVID-19 origins and begin to rebuild trust. Nie's second contribution probes intersections between Western norms and Confucian ethics and posits broad integration of Confucian xin to advance trust on the global stage.In closing, we note that the broad interest and engagement in our special issue was itself encouraging. Further, the breadth and depth of contributions from committed thinkers and practitioners across the world gives us new tools and strengthens our understanding of trust and of one another. We hope this thereby strengthens the Atlas shoulders of trust. Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, these new articles, published in an era that moves at the speed of light, also serve to reinforce age-old foundations of trust. Mutual respect and caring, clear and honest communication, responsibility and accountability, and humility remain as important as ever.
Eisen et al. (Tue,) studied this question.