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The future of public trust in science

Nature volume 524, page 161 (2015)Cite this article

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The challenges of maintaining trust in science (see Nature 522, 6; 2015) can be understood in terms of corrupting pressures that make it harder for scientists to do the good work to which many aspire.

The sheer scale of science today is destroying colleague communities; it also demands 'objective' metrics of quality, which are perverse and corruptible. These effects are compounded by imported commercial pressures. The idealism that motivated 'little science' is no longer plausible.

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  1. University of Oxford, UK

    Jerome Ravetz

  2. University of Bergen, Norway

    Andrea Saltelli

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  1. Jerome Ravetz
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  2. Andrea Saltelli
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Correspondence to Jerome Ravetz.

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Ravetz, J., Saltelli, A. The future of public trust in science. Nature 524, 161 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/524161d

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