When asked, most people likely can’t produce an objective definition that separates the discipline of science from other related academic fields. Falsification, proposed by Karl Popper in 1934, is a method of defining science that asserts science must be “falsifiable,” capable of being proven wrong with evidence from a new experiment. This also implies replicability is a necessary condition for scientific conclusions. While this falsification standard has its critics, it has been a useful tool for distinguishing science from pseudoscience and provoked productive debates about the legitimacy of astrology and certain social sciences. Originally, Popper used the Marxist theory that “all history is the history of class struggle” as an example of an unfalsifiable claim, because it can be used to explain away any event and cannot be meaningfully proved wrong.
Falsifiability is a useful epistemic term, but it has only recently entered modern, mainstream public discourse. Usually, children are instilled with the idea that science is unfalsifiable — something undeniably true, trustworthy, and impossible to disprove — because by the time a scientific finding becomes household knowledge, it has practically become that. But the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the real, messy scientific process to the masses, the most substantial part of which includes misinterpretation, conflict between scientists, and overhauls of previous ideas. The pandemic’s unusual circumstances led to conflicting messaging about transmission, safety measures, and more as scientists publicly brawled over every possible detail. Agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), which people looked towards for guidance, continuously reversed and updated their guidelines. For example, the CDC initially warned that COVID-19 was transmitted through surfaces based on an early study, but later reversed those guidelines as new data proved surface transmission is a low-risk mode of infection compared to airborne transmission. This type of confusion from expert scientists themselves, who were forced to make premature conclusions based on formative data and then take them to the public, combined with mass panic, catalyzed public mistrust in science. This misunderstanding of falsifiability opened a pathway to a host of problems, including political interference and rising religiosity – all feeding a positive feedback loop of scientific mistrust that will worsen over time if not addressed.
It is truly ironic that while falsifiability makes science legitimate, it’s the same property that has convinced Americans of its illegitimacy, especially when it comes to vaccinations and other biomedical discoveries. And it seems like an impossible problem to solve – how can we convince people to accept that medical guidance could be wrong, and still follow it anyway? Isn’t that unethical?
Normally, we don’t have to. By the time scientific knowledge becomes widely known and accepted, the likelihood of it being later disproven is low enough for institutions to be extremely confident that their recommendations will make a positive impact on public health.
A lot of mistrust around scientific institutions and “scientists” as an enigmatic group was catapulted in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic. Between April 2020 and November 2023, the amount of Americans who said they have “not too much or no confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests” rose 12 percent, to 27 percent in 2023.
It is also important to note that institutional skepticism, such as distrust of federal agencies, universities, and the pharmaceutical industry, is often confused with scientific skepticism. It is difficult to separate the institution from the science, because these same institutions have long been the sole dictators of which science is valued and discarded. This indivisibility becomes especially important when institutions make mistakes that jeopardize public health. President Trump has taken advantage of growing institutional skepticism to pass policies that will harm American science in the long run, such as his “Restoring Gold Standard Science” executive order. Ironically, it identifies a “reproducibility crisis” and outlines general scientific principles centered on falsifiability, transparency, and an ill-defined “objectivity.” While clearly an attempt to satisfy a distrustful public, it also omits and reverses Biden-era policies against political interference in publicizing scientific findings. It centralizes oversight over how agencies such as the CDC and NIH evaluate and release scientific data by elevating the role of political appointees in identifying “scientific misconduct.” Trump has managed to exploit the institutional distrust that COVID-19 boosted to subtly reverse responsible science policies.
If people are leaning away from falsifiability, they may gravitate instead towards unfalsifiable ideologies such as religion. Many religious people might be uncomfortable with the notion that, in attempting to prove the correctness of their religion, they must follow similar lines of reasoning to Marxism. In fact, the two ideologies are eerily similar in how they deal with conflicting arguments through catch-all clauses. But it’s worth correlating the decline in scientific thought with a rise in religious thought and positive attitudes towards religion – 59 percent of Americans present positive viewpoints on religious influence in American life, which is up across all age groups and party identities compared to 2019. While science skepticism is not synonymous with religious belief, religiosity plays a crucial role in predicting whether individuals accept or reject scientific consensus, especially regarding vaccines. Additionally, a continued upward trend in religiosity would massively reframe political discourse to include more religious influence and legitimize religious reasoning.
Declining trust in science has planted the seeds for political interference and increased religiosity in the United States, changes that have the ability to tangibly affect policy and innovation in the short and long run. For example, vaccine skepticism has already caused an increase in measles and whooping cough outbreaks. On the other hand, the Trump Administration’s defunding of university research has not immediately produced significant social and economic effects because investment in the biotech industry has remained consistent compared to pre-pandemic levels. University research is usually focused on fundamental science, which is concerned with advancing knowledge rather than innovating a product. The biotech industry then applies this fundamental science, creating and improving medicine and technology. Biotech companies cannot innovate without new fundamental discoveries forever, which is when American science will begin to lag.
But there is a large and realistic opportunity for change, before things become more dire. Even back in 2024, public trust was beginning to creep back up, although it remained lower than pre-pandemic levels. Projects to bridge the gap between scientific institutions and the public, familiarize people with the scientific process, distance science from political interference, and confront misuse or misrepresentation of data may help to bolster this upward trend.
Featured Image Source: The Brink