Science has lost its way, and it’s been a story decades in the making. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this detour into sharp focus, accelerating the credibility gap and contributing to a rising loss of public trust in science.
A Pew Research poll from 2023 found trust in scientists declined by 14-percentage points during the pandemic. The political divide has become even more pronounced as well. A 2021 Gallup poll found 86% of Democrats reported having a high trust in science compared to only 37% of Republicans. What’s more, distrust of science is closely correlated to distrust of other institutions.
Findings from the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute concluded that COVID-19 vaccination status correlates to trust in government, the news media, the academy and religious and scientific organizations.
The problems at the core of science are complicated and multi-faceted. Experts interviewed by Philanthropy Roundtable identified several top reasons:
- The pressure to conform to conventional wisdom has never been higher.
- Career bureaucrats now run the government and outlast presidential administrations.
- Research funding is closely tied to the National Institute of Health (NIH), leading scientists to choose research topics carefully to avoid conflicting with the NIH.
- Peer-review journals have become “pay-to-play” publications where unbiased science is crowded out.
“At the end of the day, science should not have an ebb and flow. We may learn new things, but it should not be ignored just based on politics,” said Jacob Traverse, president and CEO of the Center for Truth in Science. “If that’s the truth of the science, and the evidence supports it, the decisions should reflect that. Often, we see that’s not the case.”
Dr. Scott Atlas, a former advisor to President Donald Trump and a key contrarian against the prevailing narrative during the COVID-19 pandemic, believes the root of the loss of trust in science is based on the crowding out of dissenting voices.
“We’ve seen a dangerous increase in the role of the state in economic development, regulatory dominance and a trend to restrict personal freedom under the guise of science,” he said. “There has been a distortion of science becoming advocacy rather than seeking truth, which has led to a dangerous loss of trust in public institutions.”
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, founder of the organization Do No Harm, which seeks to counter the influence of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) mandates in medical education, adds, “I always used to tell my students: you have a whole lifetime to convince people that you’re someone of merit. It can take one minute to destroy it. And that’s what the government did. You took organizations like the CDC that were wonderful bastions of research and tried to keep the public safe, and they wasted all of their good works and public support by toeing political lines and not knowing when the data changed.”
In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned, “In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
That warning appears to be playing out, as stories of the impact of a one-way approach to science abound. Atlas, for example, was shunned at Stanford University when he challenged the COVID-19 orthodoxy. The same held true for Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, another Stanford professor who faced severe censorship after publishing research data contrary to the prevailing narrative surrounding COVID-19 death rates.
Through a series of public records requests, John Sailer of the National Association of Scholars uncovered a pattern in universities receiving a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to discriminate on racial and gender lines in hiring practices.
“The elephant in the room is the enormous power that government funding has in science and the way government directs science at universities and research institutes,” said Richard Tren of the Searle Freedom Trust.
Why Science Matters More Than Ever
Science is technical, but it matters because of the human element. Changes in the realm of science are particularly impactful to vulnerable demographics, including low-income and impoverished communities, children and the elderly. We witnessed this in stark contrast during the pandemic.
For example, there was little scientific proof to support widespread lockdowns, mask mandates and school closures. During recent testimony before the U.S. House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted his COVID-19 rules—including six-foot distancing and masking for children—were not based in science.
Elderly people were forced to die without loved ones close, students experienced massive learning loss and economic shutdowns hit the poorest communities the hardest. The United States is still paying the price for all of this today. The highest-in-a-generation inflation rate between 2022 and 2024 hit the working class and poor the hardest. Unlike wealthier individuals who often have savings and assets to buffer against rising costs, the poor and working class are struggling to make ends meet.
The pandemic-induced inflation has thus highlighted and worsened pre-existing disparities.
“The number of lockdown and societal-disruption deaths since 2020 is likely around 400,000, as much as 100 times the number of COVID deaths the lockdowns prevented,” Atlas and Steve H. Hanke wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
The bottom line is that restoring trust in science matters for the future welfare of our country. And to move forward, the way science communicates will need to change.
“Restoring [trust] will require careful and perhaps even painful self-scrutiny on the part of [scientific] institutions to learn why they lost the confidence of so many Americans during the past four years,” Tony Mills, AEI’s director of the Center for Technology, Science, and Energy, wrote in The New York Times.
To Mills, the way forward must include open dialogue, improved transparency and increased accountability in scientific communications and decisions.
And donors can pave the way forward.
Investment Opportunities
Liberty-oriented donors have been tempted to retreat from giving in the areas of medicine and science, but wise philanthropists have a key role to play in bringing truth back to science. A pivotal one is to return grounded reality to the world of science by opposing the DEI agenda. Organizations like Do No Harm aim to counter the influence of DEI mandates in medical education. Efforts are directed toward ensuring merit and scientific rigor remain the guiding principles in medical research and education.
“There’s been a long-term effort, particularly at the NIH, to encourage minorities to be involved in science. And I think that encouragement is fine,” said Do No Harm’s Goldfarb. “But the way they’ve gone about it has been problematic. It’s based on the idea that we’re going to have a better scientific workforce if it’s more diverse, which on its surface is an absurdity. Scientific research is about individual intellectual capability. It’s about dogged pursuit of goals. It’s about working really hard. It’s not about anything else.”
Another avenue is to support freedom of speech and inquiry in the science space. Atlas calls the current regime “a cabal of science control,” where a small group of people at the top through the NIH approve grants and are also the journal editors and department heads at universities.
“You cannot get promoted in a university in an academic science degree or an academic medical center without getting an NIH grant specifically. Young people are not going to jeopardize their career by speaking out against the NIH leadership,” Atlas added.
Tren, of the Searle Freedom Trust, points to examples like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression that are working to expand free speech rights across the board.
Another big challenge in this arena is the current process of peer-review in the scientific community.
“The underpinning of the scientific community is iterative, slow, painful peer review,” said Traverse.
But today, the process is monopolized by journals that profit from free submissions and unpaid reviewers. This system has led to significant issues. Traverse says academic institutions need to change how they hire and retain researchers to address these economic incentives and improve the integrity of scientific research.
Another avenue for donors to consider is by direct funding of institutions, individual scholars and media sources. For example, Dr. Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at Georgia Mason University and faculty director at the Mercatus Center, has created so-called “fast grants” that allow scientists to quickly apply for and receive funding decisions within 48 hours. The money flows quickly afterward. This was a model from the COVID-19 pandemic of how philanthropists can quickly expedite grants to fill an urgent need.
Along the same lines, a promising way forward is to support the next generation of young scientists willing to challenge the establishment orthodoxy. Support fellowships to incentivize conservatives to make a career in the sciences and invest in workforce education in the STEM field. A good investment opportunity in this arena is the Global Liberty Institute, founded by Atlas, which aims to promote individual and economic freedom and the free exchange of ideas.
GLI focuses on creating a coalition of young professionals who value free markets, limited central government and individual freedoms. The group advocates creating clear pathways for rising leaders in the field, dispelling fears associated with cancel culture and ensuring competent individuals ascend to influential positions. GLI has successfully mentored around 150 young people in various fields, aiming to connect them with senior business leaders and policymakers.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, says one of his most frequent pieces of advice for donors is to resist the temptation to support universities broadly and instead fund individual scientists or labs.
“A better approach is to donate to researchers who are doing the kind of research you feel is good,” Prasad said. “One of the challenges if you donate to a place like Harvard or Johns Hopkins is you don’t know if the money will be used for something that you disagree with, or that defies common sense, or an agenda you didn’t sign up for.”
Prasad’s own lab, VK Prasad Laboratory, has explored issues including cancer research and approaches to medical practice. But since 2020, the lab has also focused on the efficacy of the response to the pandemic, including employer-mandated vaccine policies.
Still another investment opportunity is in bringing a differing perspective through alternative media sources. Look to fund media platforms to inform the public and lawmakers about data or research initiatives mainstream outlets ignore.
Ultimately, perhaps the biggest way donors can make a difference is by helping return balance to the world of science.
As Prasad said, “Just because many scientists have been captured and become ideologues cheering one political party doesn’t mean that all of science is broken. The more we can have balance in universities, the more we can have people who have different points of view and who feel empowered to speak up, the more we can have debates, the reality is that the people who are correct will win.”
