Swiss science leads trust rankings as democracy role comes under scrutiny

Science is now the most trusted institution in Switzerland, ranking ahead of the police, government and parliament, SRF reports. The finding comes from the annual Security study by ETH Zurich.

Science historian Naomi Oreskes of Harvard University welcomed the result, saying it showed that the Swiss public valued high-quality information more than people in the United States.

Political scientist Eri Bertsou of the University of St. Gallen said people were becoming increasingly divided over science. She said political attitudes towards science varied by context. After the Cold War, people on the political left in Eastern Europe were more likely to be sceptical of science. Today, the pattern is more similar to those in Western Europe and the United States, where scepticism is more often associated with the political right.

The ETH Zurich study also found that trust in science declined as respondents positioned themselves further to the right. Bertsou said the high overall level of trust in Switzerland was not surprising because uncertainty increased the need for guidance.

Data from a study covering 68 countries also showed that many people wanted scientists to become more involved in politics.

Bertsou criticised the slogan “Follow the Science”, which former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson used in spring 2020 to justify government decisions. The phrase “The Science” suggested that there was a single scientific answer, she said. In reality, new data was added continuously, assumptions were revised, and scientific assessments and models changed during the pandemic.

When governments changed their policies, science was often blamed, Bertsou said, particularly because governments had previously claimed to be following it. The slogan suggested that political decisions could be derived directly from scientific findings, blurring the boundary between scientific advice and political responsibility.

Trust did not disappear but shifted, Bertsou said. People who lost trust in politics might place it in a populist figure or in science instead.

Ralph Weber, a China researcher at the University of Basel, said authoritarian states lacked the critical tension between science and government found in democracies. In China, he said, science was expected to help the ruling party exercise power.

The idea that there is one best solution is closely linked to autocratic rule, Weber said. Such systems could be efficient, but open debate was a strength of science in democracies. Democratic societies could debate what the actual problem was, while authoritarian states skipped that step.

The international connections of science created challenges because science served a different function and had a different self-understanding in authoritarian states than in democracies. Researchers wanted to remain at the forefront of the global competition for knowledge and innovation, but also needed to prevent cooperation from strengthening authoritarian systems in the long term.

For Weber, this meant preserving openness without being naive. Cooperation and exchange were important, but their consequences also had to be considered. Researchers working with China on hydraulic engineering, for example, should be able to assess what the lack of separation between civilian and military research could mean for a project.

Weber said he was no longer thinking only of countries such as China, but also of democracies with strong authoritarian tendencies, including India and the United States. The proportion of democracies worldwide has declined in recent decades.

Digitalisation was contributing to growing scepticism, Weber observed. While he would have hesitated to challenge professors when he was a student, authorities were questioned more quickly today.

At the same time, he said, the boundary between opinion and knowledge had become more permeable. In the worst case, people could search YouTube for material that reinforced their views and then present it as knowledge. This put pressure on universities to demonstrate their value to society and explain how scientific knowledge was produced.