T
his week (17 to 20 February), the virtual annual
meeting of the American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science (AAAS, the publisher of Sci-
ence) will address the challenges of building the
public’s trust and understanding of science by
illuminating both great science and innovative
initiatives in advocacy, education, and policy. The
theme, “Empower with Evidence,” speaks to the critical
importance of decision-making, policy-making, and inter-
ventions that are grounded in knowledge and facts, not
opinions—or worse, misinformation.
The ability of science to transform the world is increas-
ingly threatened by misinformation that is jeopardizing
trust in science. As highlighted in Science last week, the
world’s information ecosystem is rapidly changing, and
online environments have become a powerful open mar-
ketplace of facts, ideas, and opinions—where the mean-
ingfulness of science is easily drowned out by the noise.
Solutions to this dilemma include training students
and professional scientists to more effectively translate
their work to the public, harness-
ing insights from the behavioral
and social sciences to better en-
gage with the public, and work-
ing with social media platforms
to improve information delivery
to a broader audience. These are
important efforts, but do they get
to the root of the problem?
Science has long been touted
as the solver of all problems, and
during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, the pub-
lic craves certainty. But science is dynamic, and when
knowledge changes—and technology is now enabling
rapid changes—the public can become confused and even
doubtful when shifts in understanding are framed the
wrong way. Scientists and educators must do a better job
of explaining how science works to the public, as well as
to policy-makers and leaders. Science continually chal-
lenges and improves on the current state of knowledge.
This is how the world progresses. It is the job of the sci-
entific community to explain new findings in this context.
Without this framing, the dynamic nature of science may
be misunderstood as a weakness rather than a strength,
and new findings may be misrepresented to the public.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed this vulnerability, with
dire consequences. One need only look at the hundreds
of thousands of needless deaths resulting from vaccine
misinformation.
Part of making the scientific process less mysterious
and questionable for everyone is providing greater trans-parency. Science advances through positive and negative
results, and better ways are needed to report or share this
information and present the full picture of studies. There
also must be a means through which all fields of study
commit to rigorously assessing the reproducibility of their
findings. These are efforts that bolster, not diminish, con-
fidence in science, both within and outside the scientific
community. Collaborative and open science efforts have
spurred the rapid growth of open-source platforms, data
sharing, common methodology, and computational tools
that enhance both scientific rigor and the generalizability
of findings. Well-validated data are essential for the fur-
ther development of new inventions and innovations. In
parallel, the scientific enterprise still must provide oppor-
tunities for exploratory research, hypothesis-generating
studies, and high risk–high reward endeavors, again af-
firming to the public that such pursuits can lead to deeper
understanding as well as breakthrough discoveries.
As science progresses, society must be ever aware of
the consequences. It can be challenging for advances
that generate change to gain
widespread acceptance. Sadly,
there are examples throughout
history in which scientific ad-
vances were implemented with-
out careful thought about their
long-term impacts on the envi-
ronment or society. This breeds
distrust in science. For example,
the failure to consider subgroups
in population-level research has
sometimes led to social and economic disparities in hu-
man health. Conversely, stratification of subgroups in
clinical trials—such as Black patients with congestive
heart failure, for example—has led to improved thera-
pies that might otherwise have been missed. Building
greater diversity in the scientific workforce may also
lead to a more equitable impact of new advances and
improve the ability to communicate science to wider
communities.
Public perception of science depends on an apprecia-
tion that the scientific process is nuanced and cannot
be reduced to overstated conclusions, and worse, pre-
mature implications for use by society. Without this un-
derstanding, failures to predict outcomes or revisions of
earlier findings may reinforce, in some quarters, a be-
lief that science cannot be trusted. Let this be science’s
overriding message: As new discoveries inevitably alter
our understanding, the methods of science push us ever
closer to the truth.
–Susan G. AmaraEmpower with evidence
Susan G. Amara
is president of the
American Association
for the Advancement
of Science,
Washington, DC, USA.
[email protected]10.1126/science.abo
PHOTO: DELANY TORRES-SALAZAR
SCIENCE science.org 18 FEBRUARY 2022 • VOL 375 ISSUE 6582 699EDITORIAL
“...misinformation...
is jeopardizing
trust in science.”