“Public Trust” as Moral Vocabulary of Science

• In Event: 20833 - Science, Knowledge & Technology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 7: Meaning-making: morals, ethics, and affect

Abstract

Large-scale surveys show that Americans’ trust in science remains high, yet the claim that public trust is “eroding” or “fragile” has become a taken-for-granted problem inside science. I treat that claim as a stylized fact: a lightly theorized regularity that diffuses easily and does cultural, and particularly moral, work. I explore how the fragility of public trust does that moral work and organizes moral regulation within science. Drawing on 1,786 editorial letters published in Science magazine (1996–2025), I examine how scientists mobilize “public trust” not as a measurable attitude but as a moral vocabulary--a common language for locating harm and allocating blame and responsibility. I combine natural language processing techniques with close reading and inductive coding of blame, obligation, and harm. I show that scientists overwhelmingly use the notion of public trust and its fragility as an interpretant, invoking it in passing as a consequential danger attached to a practice in need of regulation, to moralize other issues rather than to discuss public trust itself. They invoke it in two recurrent moral scripts: professional accountability (internal conduct, reform, self-regulation) and institutional autonomy (external threat, boundary defense).

Author

• Elizaveta Sheremet, Columbia University