Edition #26 - When Trust in Science Breaks

Why truth, funding, and public trust just became part of the human future

By Mykel Salomon · 2026-06-20

<h3>Why truth, funding, and public trust just became part of the human future</h3><hr><h3>🔓 Opening Reflection</h3>When trust in science declines, society does not become more free.It becomes more fragile.This week marked a strange anniversary. One hundred years ago, in the summer of 1925, a teacher named John Scopes was put on trial in Tennessee for teaching evolution in a public school. A jury found him guilty. The science was already settled. Darwin had published On the Origin of Species in 1859. And still, a courtroom decided that some truths were too dangerous to teach.My guest this week, Nicholas B. Dirks, President and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences, made a point that reframed the whole conversation for me:Distrust in science is not new.In the United States, it runs in cycles. Every twenty or thirty years, something rises up against expertise, against institutions, against the idea that some people know things the rest of us don't.So the crisis we are living through is not unprecedented.But the tools are.Because for the first time, we have technology that can manufacture doubt at scale. AI did not invent fake news. Social media already did that. But AI can now generate fake images, fake video, fake experts, and fake certainty faster than any human can verify them.And in that world, the question stops being only:What is true?The question becomes:Who do we still trust enough to believe?That is where this conversation stayed with me. Because science does not survive on discovery alone.Science survives when enough people trust the process to let discovery continue.<hr><h3>🔦 Signal of the Week</h3>The numbers tell a more complicated story than the headlines.This month, Pew Research Center released its newest tracking of public trust in scientists. 77% of U.S. adults say they have at least a fair amount of confidence in scientists to act in the public's best interest — actually up slightly from 76% the year before.That sounds reassuring. Scientists still rank as one of the most trusted groups in American life, ahead of business leaders and elected officials.But two things sit underneath that number.First, it is still well below where we started. At the onset of COVID in April 2020, 87% of Americans expressed confidence in scientists. We have not recovered that ground.Second, the average hides a canyon. 90% of Democrats versus 65% of Republicans say they trust scientists. When trust splits this cleanly along political lines, science stops being a shared foundation and becomes one more identity marker — something you're for or against depending on your team.Higher education tells a similar story, with a twist worth noting. Confidence in colleges and universities fell from 57% in 2015 to a low of 36% in 2024 — and then, for the first time in a decade, it rose to 42% in 2025. Still far below where it started, but moving in the right direction for the first time in years.I want to be honest about that last point, because the easy version of this newsletter would have stopped at 36%. The fuller truth is more useful: trust is fragile, but it is not in free fall. It can be rebuilt. That is the entire reason this work matters.And here is what makes the rebuild hard.A landmark MIT study analyzed every verified true and false news story that spread on Twitter over more than a decade. The finding: false news was 70% more likely to be retweeted than the truth, and reached its first 1,500 people about six times faster. The most uncomfortable part? It wasn't bots. It was us. Humans spread falsehood faster than facts, because lies are often more novel, more emotional, more shareable.That means truth is not only competing against lies.It is competing against speed, emotion, and algorithms built to reward your reaction before your reflection.<hr><h3>🌍 In the Wild</h3>Here is what the trust crisis actually looks like on the ground.<h3>1. "Follow the science" stopped working — and Nick explained why</h3>Early in the pandemic, the slogan was everywhere: follow the science.But people watched the science change in real time. First it was surfaces, so we scrubbed our groceries. Then it was aerosols. First, don't wear a mask. Then, wear a mask. Some of that was the normal process of learning. Some of it was poor communication, and some was a mask shortage that got explained badly.The public didn't experience it as learning.They experienced it as confusion. And confusion, handled without humility, curdles into distrust.Nick told me about something the Academy did differently. In the first weeks of COVID, they ran webinars where scientists didn't pretend to have the answers — they talked openly about what they were still figuring out. Those were the sessions people responded to most. Even journalists showed up, because the scientists were modeling the actual process.His line is the one I keep coming back to:The goal is to communicate what science does, not what science is.Not a finished list of facts handed down from authority. A human process of learning, with the uncertainty left visible.Trust isn't built by pretending there's no doubt.It's built by being the one person in the room honest enough to name it.<hr><h3>2. Misinformation is no longer cheap content. It's a public-health risk</h3>Fake news isn't just a media problem anymore.It moves elections. It moves vaccine decisions. It moves whether someone trusts the doctor in front of them. And AI raises the ceiling on all of it — a fake expert who sounds credible, a fake clip that looks real, a fake claim packaged beautifully enough to outrun the correction.Nick made a point I haven't stopped thinking about. People rarely believe misinformation because they are simply uninformed. They believe it because it connects to something real: a fear, an identity, a grievance, a pain.So the answer cannot only be more facts.If facts alone worked, we'd have won already.The answer has to include better storytelling, deeper listening, and communication that treats people as capable of handling complexity. Nick has a name for this. He calls it retail science — taking science out of the lab the way a good campaign takes politics to the doorstep. Meeting people where they are, in language that makes sense to them, without dumbing it down.Science has to become understandable without becoming simplistic.That's not a downgrade. That's a skill.<hr><h3>3. Discovery is not magic. It's funding, time, and patience most people never see</h3>We like to believe breakthroughs come from lone geniuses with a flash of insight.Nick told a better story. When he was Chancellor at UC Berkeley, one of his faculty, Randy Schekman, won the Nobel Prize. Schekman's work helped make synthetic insulin possible — relief for millions of people managing blood sugar. But it didn't start as an insulin project. It started as plain curiosity about how cells move things across their membranes. No product in mind. No application in sight. Just a question worth chasing.That is what most people misunderstand about science. The research that ends up mattering most often begins with no obvious payoff at all.And someone has to fund that.The federal government still pays for the majority of it. In FY 2024, federal sources funded 55% of all university research and development — over $64 billion, with the NIH as the single largest source. That public money tends to fund exactly the kind of curiosity-driven, no-guaranteed-return work that private capital usually won't touch, because investors need a path to profit.Think the private sector built the world on its own? Nick's example: the iPhone. Steve Jobs designed it and marketed it brilliantly. But nearly every core feature — the chip, the GPS, the touchscreen, the communications tech — traces back to publicly funded research, national labs, and DARPA, decades before anyone imagined a phone.So what happened in 2025 matters.Roughly 5,300 NIH and NSF grants were frozen or terminated, more than $5 billion in research left unspent, according to Science News. Here's the nuance the headlines missed, and the part that's actually more important: total federal research dollars stayed roughly flat. What collapsed was predictability. Already-awarded grants were cancelled mid-stream — something no prior administration had done at this scale — and the number of new grants the NSF funded dropped by about a quarter compared to its ten-year average.Flat budgets, fewer new doors, and broken promises in the middle of live projects.If you're trying to build a career on that, the message is clear: don't count on the path being there tomorrow.<hr><h3>4. The next generation of scientists is doing the math</h3>This is the part that worries me most.A young scientist needs more than passion. They need a path. A postdoc earning around $65,000 a year, working brutal hours, watching most of their experiments fail, doing it because the work matters — that person is making a long bet on a future that pays off slowly, if at all.Now show them frozen grants, political pressure, and shrinking odds of a new award.Some will leave science. Some will leave the country. Some will never start.And when a generation steps away, the loss isn't theirs.It's ours.Because the cure we need in fifteen years may depend on the person we quietly discourage today.<hr><h3>5. The human-centered question AI forces us to ask</h3>I asked Nick what he'd tell policymakers about AI safeguards. His answer was humbling: even the people building these systems don't fully understand how they produce what they produce. So no single group — not the labs, not the government alone — should decide the rules by themselves. He argued for broad participation, including neutral institutions that can sit between competing interests.But the moment that stayed with me was smaller and more human.Imagine, he said, you go to the doctor. You're told a robot can read your scan correctly 95% of the time. The human doctor, only 90%. Do you want the robot?Maybe. The number says yes.But the human doctor does something the machine doesn't. They translate fear into understanding. They sit with you. They earn your trust, which doctors will tell you is often the most important part of care.That's the whole thesis of this show in one example. The best use of AI isn't replacing the human in the room.It's giving that human more room to be human.<hr><h3>💬 The Big Question</h3>What happens to a society when it stops trusting the people trying to understand reality?Are we willing to defend science before we personally need it to save someone we love?Most of us become believers in research the day a diagnosis enters our family.The question is whether we'll value it the day before.<hr><h3>🧠 A Small Exercise</h3>Take ten minutes this week. Answer honestly.<ol><li>Where do I actually get my scientific information? An institution, a headline, a creator, a friend, an algorithm?</li><li>When I see a scientific claim online, do I verify it before I share it? Or do I share it because it confirms what I already feel?</li><li>What's one topic I distrust — and why? Is the distrust built on evidence, experience, politics, fear, or just confusion?</li><li>What would actually raise my trust? More transparency? Better communication? More humility? More local voices?</li><li>What science do I want funded for the next generation? Cancer? Dementia? Climate? Mental health? AI safety?</li></ol>This isn't about becoming a scientist.It's about becoming a more responsible human inside an information system that wants your reaction faster than your reflection.<hr><h3>🎙️ This Week's Episode</h3>Renewing Public Trust in Science Guest: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80 ember-view" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-b-dirks-029499a6/">Nicholas B. Dirks</a> — President and CEO, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80 rbJlXBzRbySbuPCWQzjoswVAGlGBFmEhY " href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/nyasciences/">The New York Academy of Sciences</a>A conversation about what happens when public trust in science weakens, and why rebuilding it may be one of the defining challenges of our time.We talk about:<ul><li>Why distrust in science is a recurring American cycle — and why AI makes this turn more dangerous</li><li>How COVID exposed both the power of science and the failure of scientific communication</li><li>Why deepfakes and misinformation make truth itself harder to recognize</li><li>Why science has to communicate as a human process of learning, not a distant authority</li><li>How decades of federal funding built American scientific leadership — from CRISPR to the iPhone</li><li>What happens to a generation of young scientists when the path forward disappears</li><li>Why science and AI both have to serve human flourishing, not just progress</li></ul>Science isn't a slogan.It's a public good. And public goods require public trust.🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.<img class="max-w-full h-auto rounded-md my-4" src="https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/D4D12AQFj28w6mn4d7Q/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/B4DZ7liMaCIYAI-/0/1781967407010?e=1784764800&v=beta&t=s1oymu3c3FS2nIptXhuoHr-AWpjyKOGCm-p50YeXMDg" alt="Article content"><hr><h3>🧭 Thought to End the Week</h3>Science does not ask us to believe blindly.It asks us to stay curious. To test. To question. To revise. To admit when we don't know, and keep going anyway.That isn't weakness.It's the most human part of the whole enterprise.Not science as arrogance.Science as humility. Science as service. Science as the long, imperfect, deeply human effort to understand enough truth to protect a life.Because when trust in science breaks, the future doesn't get clearer.It just gets easier to manipulate.Which is why rebuilding trust isn't only a scientific responsibility.It's a human one.The code may change. Our humanity is the constant.See you next week.— Mykel<hr><h3>📚 Sources</h3><ol><li>Pew Research Center, Americans' Confidence in Scientists (Jan. 15, 2026) — 77% confidence in scientists; 87% at COVID onset; Democrat/Republican split; 84% say federal science investment is worthwhile. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2026/01/15/americans-confidence-in-scientists/">https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2026/01/15/americans-confidence-in-scientists/</a></li><li>Gallup / Lumina Foundation, U.S. Public Trust in Higher Education Rises From Recent Low (Jul. 2025) — 57% (2015) → 36% (2024) → 42% (2025). <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/692519/public-trust-higher-rises-recent-low.aspx">https://news.gallup.com/poll/692519/public-trust-higher-rises-recent-low.aspx</a></li><li>Vosoughi, Roy & Aral, The Spread of True and False News Online, Science (2018), via MIT Sloan — false news 70% more likely to be retweeted; reaches 1,500 people ~6x faster; humans, not bots, drive it. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-false-news-spreads-faster-truth">https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-false-news-spreads-faster-truth</a></li><li>NCSES / National Science Foundation, Universities Report 8.1% Growth in R&D Expenditures in FY 2024 (NSF 26-305) — federal sources funded 55% ($64B+) of university R&D; NIH/HHS largest source. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf26305">https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf26305</a></li><li>Science News, See the alarming extent of NIH and NSF funding cuts in 2025 (Jan. 2026) — ~5,300 grants frozen/ended, $5B+ unspent. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nih-nsf-cuts-2025-data">https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nih-nsf-cuts-2025-data</a></li><li>Nature, US science after a year of Trump: what has been lost and what remains (Jan. 2026) — new NSF grants down ~25% vs. 10-year average; mid-stream cancellations unprecedented. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#4FD1C5] underline hover:opacity-80" href="https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-026-00088-9/index.html">https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-026-00088-9/index.html</a></li></ol>