Over the past three years, people from all walks of life have learned a great deal about different branches of science. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced many of us to information about virology and vaccine production. Environmental disasters in every part of the world have brought concepts from meteorology and climatology to daily news reports.
In general, people trust scientists more than they do most other professions. But this isn’t the case universally. Trust in science dropped in sub-Saharan Africa after the pandemic. In other parts of the world, in particular the US, public opinion about science is driven by political ideology and is becoming increasingly polarised.
As multi award-winning Australian filmmaker Sonya Pemberton put it during a plenary address at the 2023 Public Communication of Science and Technology Conference: “We have access to so much information, and yet simultaneously some areas of science are facing walls of doubt, disbelief and distrust.”
