Review Article
Open Access
A New Dark Age? Truth, Trust, and Environmental Science
- Torbjørn Gundersen1,Donya Alinejad2,T.Y. Branch3,Bobby Duffy4,Kirstie Hewlett4,Cathrine Holst1,Susan Owens5,Folco Panizza6,7,Silje Maria Tellmann8,José van Dijck2, andMaria Baghramian9
- View AffiliationsHide AffiliationsAffiliations:1Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway2Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands3Institut Jean Nicod (IJN), Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France4The Policy Institute, King's College London, London, United Kingdom5Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom6Molecular Mind Laboratory, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy7Centre for Applied and Experimental Epistemology, Department of Philosophy, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy8TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway9School of Philosophy, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland; email:[email protected]
- Vol. 47:5-29(Volume publication date October 2022)
- First published as a Review in Advance on July 18, 2022
- Copyright © 2022 by Annual Reviews.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information
Abstract
This review examines the alleged crisis of trust in environmental science and its impact on public opinion, policy decisions in the context of democratic governance, and the interaction between science and society. In an interdisciplinary manner, the review focuses on the following themes: the trustworthiness of environmental science, empirical studies on levels of trust and trust formation; social media, environmental science, and disinformation; trust in environmental governance and democracy; and co-production of knowledge and the production of trust in knowledge. The review explores both the normative issue of trustworthiness and empirical studies on how to build trust. The review does not provide any simple answers to whether trust in science is generally in decline or whether we are returning to a lessenlightened era in public life with decreased appreciation of knowledge and truth. The findings are more nuanced, showing signs of both distrust and trust in environmental science.