Deepening Understanding of Public Trust in Science

As changes sweep the scientific enterprise, researchers’ questions about how the public connects to, trusts in, and supports science have taken on urgency. Science and Society Sparks, a bite-sized program for researchers with a connection to The Kavli Foundation, offered webinars, readings, and discussion sessions examining how society engages with scientists, research, and evidence. This story series highlights instructors and participants in the Sparks program to showcase the insights emerging from the sessions.

Jeanne Garbarino has seen even well-intentioned scientists struggle with a slide deck. She is executive director of The Rockefeller University’s RockEDU science outreach program, which is one of her many projects that involves helping postdoctoral researchers develop talks about their work for audiences unfamiliar with it.

“The pattern I have noticed over and over is this notion that quantity equals quality,” Garbarino says. The more experiments and results crammed into the talk, the better. It’s a counterproductive notion. Social science research suggests that curating data to tell a story is far more likely to be enthralling and memorable than a data dump. So, Garbarino finds herself constantly asking scientists to focus on their research’s big picture and cut data that doesn’t serve that storyline.

It’s only an introduction to the many more sophisticated forms that science communications can take. But Garbarino, whose background is in the biochemistry of metabolism, is sympathetic to the scientists’ perspective. Academia drills into them that they must defend their viewpoints with rigorous data, and scientists may find that conditioning hard to tamp down, she says. But tamp it down they must, especially when interacting with audiences outside the ivory tower. “We want to come across as smart, as productive, and that’s just not what people are looking for.”

Garbarino spoke on Dec. 3, 2025, as part of Science and Society Sparks, a program that The Kavli Foundation developed. The foundation designed the program to give a small cohort of Kavli-affiliated early career scientists support and resources to learn about the nuanced relationship between science and society in the United States and then to perhaps question assumptions they may have made in light of 2025’s swift disruptions to the scientific enterprise. After in-depth talks from the Association of Science and Technology Centers and the American Physical Society’s Science Trust Project, Garbarino’s 90-minute webinar aimed to help the cohort members identify practical next steps for integrating what they’d learned into their science and their outreach.

“We know about so many excellent, in-depth communications training programs for scientists. We also know that not all researchers have the time to devote themselves to immersive training, even those interested in understanding the relationship between science and society and improving their skills,” says Brooke Smith, senior director of Science and Society at The Kavli Foundation. “Our intention is to provide a bite-sized, manageable program, one that sparks participants to more deeply interrogate the relationship between science and society as they consider what role, if any, they want to play in strengthening it. Garbarino’s session acknowledges that after sparking that new thinking, scientists may be hungry to do something, and she will help them explore what ‘something’ might be most impactful for them.”

Turning Insights Into Action
Participants learned through the Sparks program’s earlier webinars and background reading to prioritize connecting with audiences rather than rushing to correct misinformation. But taking the first steps toward real connections can be daunting and unfamiliar to scientists. Garbarino offers a simpler way to begin.

“When we’re thinking about trust, what we’re really thinking about is relationships,” Garbarino says. To feel less overwhelmed about audience selection, scientists can ask themselves a series of simple questions that could help them identify where they might build genuine relationships related to their work, such as What organizations, workplaces, places of worship, or other community groups are in my local area? It’s about tapping into the surroundings you may not think about in your day-to-day research, Garbarino says. How can I interact with people in my orbit in a casual, conversational way, instead of inviting them to my scientific turf for a lecture? What do I want to understand about them and learn from them? And importantly, what do they want out of my science communication?

Garbarino also suggested ways that would-be communicators could find alignment with their audiences. For example, to achieve a goal of promoting evidence-based policy, science communicators should tap into local governments and community organizations rather than deciding for themselves what the key policy concerns are in their area. Once they have established trust, then it’s possible to look for ways to contribute.

This exercise might be especially challenging for those who conduct curiosity-driven research that doesn’t have applications in mind, Garbarino suggests. It’s easier for an applied scientist who studies a particular disease area, for example, to connect with patient groups in their county or state. For those focused on basic science, Garbarino recommends pondering how their groups determine research directions. Backgrounds and interests influence the research questions that two different scientists might consider a priority — even when those researchers are thinking about the same preliminary data. Scientists can ask themselves what points of view might be missing, Garbarino says, which could spark ideas for groups they could target for relationship-building.

From Social Science Insights to Real Engagement
Much of what experts know about building trust as well as about the complex relationship between science and society is rooted in social science research that spans decades. As part of the Sparks program, participants were asked to review a list of publications and poll results that aren’t native to their scientific disciplines. And although participants began to unpack these resources’ meanings in the Sparks program’s three webinars and two group discussions, it’s another thing entirely to connect insights from social sciences to real interactions, Garbarino notes. Scientists may need to seek help, she adds, but at least they can now identify that they need it rather than basing a communications strategy on instinct alone. For example, at Rockefeller, Garbarino imparts social science best practices to neuroscientists and other basic researchers who volunteer at the university’s annual Science Saturday, a STEM festival for families with students in kindergarten through eighth grade. “We work with scientists to help them come into their roles with humility, to be open-minded and hear what people have to say, and then to shape their messaging based off of what they’re hearing,” Garbarino says.

She recommended that Sparks participants seek out storytelling and public speaking opportunities in their area, including ones not traditionally focused on science, such as Toastmasters International. She also suggested incorporating a small but consistent science communications practice, such as committing to one community interaction each month. Finally, she recommended ways to engage local communities outside of science to build trust, such as volunteering as a poll worker or becoming a regular at weekly farmers’ markets.

After the webinar, bioengineer P.S. Nandini took that suggestion to heart and met with locals at an Oakland, California, farmers’ market. Nandini is a Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public graduate fellow affiliated with the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Bioengineering Graduate Program. The Kavli Center had set up a stall where community members could informally chat with scientists. “My research is with neurotechnology, specifically implanted devices in psychiatric patients,” so it has significant ethical implications, Nandini says. During deep Saturday morning conversations, Nandini kept in mind Garbarino’s tip that people find humility more trustworthy than absolute confidence. Locals shared their thoughts with Nandini on the pros and cons of funding, restricting or even banning neurotechnologies. “I learned a lot,” Nandini shared, reflecting on these interactions.

Building a Culture of Scientist–Public Engagement
Garbarino hopes to catalyze a culture shift in how scientists think about public outreach. The Sparks program assembled an intimate group to think deeply about public opinion and effective communication strategies, she says. “If we can work with some scientists across Kavli Institutes, can the ideas they encounter then spread within their institutions?” Nandini, for one, has already presented a poster about what she learned at UC Berkeley’s Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public.

In an ideal world, Garbarino would love to see the Sparks cohort create a science communication club to spread the word to its scientific peers. Surveys (ASBMB, PLOS, and Frontiers) suggest that scientists who are interested in engaging public audiences or addressing misinformation commonly get stuck because they don’t know where to start or whom to ask for guidance. A club of peers could remove that stumbling block. “People are so creative,” she says. “Just give them the tools, and things can move far.”