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PERSPECTIVE
Gaps in public trust between scientists and climate scientists: a
68 country study
Omid Ghasemi1,2,∗, Viktoria Cologna3, Niels G Mede4, Samantha K Stanley1,2, Noel Strahm5,
Robert Ross6, Mark Alfano6, John R Kerr7, Mathew D Marques8, Sebastian Berger5,
John C Besley9, Cameron Brick10, Marina Joubert11, Edward Maibach12, Sabina Mihelj13,
Ben R Newell1,2, Naomi Oreskes14and Mike S Schäfer4
1UNSW Institute for Climate Risk & Response, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
2School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
3Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
4Department of Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
5Department of Sociology, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
6Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
7Department of Public Health, University of Otago, Wellington, New Zealand
8School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
9Department of Advertising +Public Relations, Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States of America
10 Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
11 Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa
12 George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, Fairfax, VA, United States of America
13 Centre for Research in Communication and Culture, Department of Communication and Media, Loughborough University,
Loughborough, United Kingdom
14 Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States of America
∗Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.
E-mail: o.ghasemi@unsw.edu.au
Keywords: climate change, trust in scientists, climate science, political polarization, trustworthiness, trust gap
Supplementary material for this article is available online
Abstract
This study compares public trust in climate scientists and scientists in general across 68 countries
(N=69,534). On average, participants reported moderately high levels of trust in climate
scientists, with trust levels being slightly lower than trust in scientists in general. Overall, this trust
gap was larger among participants who identified as politically conservative or right-leaning, but
there was considerable variation across countries.
Trust in scientists forms an important basis for pub-
lic support for science-based solutions to major soci-
etal challenges. Higher trust is associated with greater
willingness to defer decision-making to experts [1]
and to follow public health recommendations [2]. In
the case of climate scientists, trust is associated with
belief in and concern about climate change [3] and
greater support for climate policies [4,5]. Low trust in
climate scientists may hinder effective climate science
communication and reduce public engagement with
climate solutions, particularly when lagging behind
trust in scientists in general.
However, climate change countermovements
have actively sought to undermine trust in climate sci-
entists and their findings [6]. This may have contrib-
uted to lower trust in climate scientists compared to
scientists from other fields, particularly among polit-
ical conservatives [7,8]. While some studies find cli-
mate scientists are generally perceived as trustworthy
[9,10], and as trustworthy as other scientists in five
out of six European countries studied [11], other
research reports climate scientists are less trusted than
other scientists in several countries. For example, in
the United States [12] and Norway [13], climate sci-
entists are trusted less than scientists in general, with
conservative political orientation predicting larger
differences in trust between climate scientists and
scientists in general. Moreover, in the United States,
federal agencies that focus on general science are trus-
ted more strongly than climate-focused agencies, with
conservative political orientation being a significant
predictor of larger differences in trust [14]. These
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd
Environ. Res. Lett. 20 (2025) 061002 O Ghasemi et al
findings are consistent with the link between conser-
vatism and distrust of climate science [15,16], cli-
mate scientists [8,17], and scientists in general [18].
However, while this trust gap has been documented in
the United States and a few European countries, there
remains a lack of cross-cultural research investigating
whether this trust gap is cross-culturally robust and,
if so, what demographic, psychological, and country-
level variables are most predictive of this gap.
Hence, we analysed data from the Trust in Science
and Science-Related Populism (TISP) Many labs
study [19,20], which provides the largest snap-
shot to date of public trust in scientists. Participants
(N=69,534) from 68 countries indicated their trust
in scientists in their country and trust in scientists
working on climate change in their country. Trust in
scientists was indexed using a 12-item questionnaire
assessing perceptions of scientists’ expertise, integrity,
benevolence, and openness, which theoretically con-
tribute to trustworthiness perceptions [21], whereas
participants rated the extent they trust climate scient-
ists with a single item (see the supplementary mater-
ials for details). In each case, higher scores along 5-
point scales reflected greater trust.
Figure 1(A) shows that trust in climate scient-
ists was moderately strong, as it was above the mid-
point of the 1–5 scale (Mweighted =3.50, SD =1.18).
However, it was slightly, but significantly lower
than trust in scientists in general (Mweighted =3.62,
SD =.70), t(69,463) =19.68, p<.001, d=.12.
There was a notable variation between countries.
Out of 68 countries, 43 showed lower trust in cli-
mate scientists compared to scientists in general, 19
showed no significant difference in trust ratings, and
six showed higher trust. Figure 1(B) displays the vari-
ation in trust ratings across the world. While par-
ticipants in some countries in South Asia, Central
Europe, and North Africa rated trust in climate sci-
entists higher than trust in scientists, the majority
of participants—particularly those in Europe, North
and Latin America, and Africa—trusted scientists
more than climate scientists. Those countries that
show the two strongest differences are instructive:
in China, remarkably high trust in climate scientists
compared to scientists in general conforms with high
public support for national climate policies [22] and
the perceived role of climate scientists in advancing
those policies. In Democratic Republic of the Congo,
unusually low trust in climate scientists compared
to scientists in general could result from concerns
that international climate initiatives, often promoted
by climate scientists, may prioritize global renew-
able energy demands over local interests, leading to
resource exploitation without equitable benefits for
local communities [23].
What factors predict trust in scientists and trust
in climate scientists? To address this question, we
conducted multilevel regression analyses. As these
analyses were not preregistered, we closely followed
previous approaches [19], incorporating the same
predictors with the addition of country-level emis-
sions and corruption indices (see supplementary
materials for details). As figure 2shows, age, right-
leaning and conservative political orientation, social
dominance orientation, as well as science-related
populist attitudes predicted lower trust in climate sci-
entists when controlling for other variables. Each of
these variables predicted a stronger negative relation-
ship with trust in climate scientists than with trust in
scientists in general. By contrast, living in an urban
area, religiosity, and positive attitudes towards sci-
ence predicted higher trust in climate scientists, with
science-related attitudes being the strongest positive
predictor of trust in climate scientists. Being male
was associated with lower trust in scientists but was
not significantly associated with trust in climate sci-
entists. Across genders, trust in scientists was higher
than trust in climate scientists (Mweighted =3.63 vs.
3.50 for women; Mweighted =3.61 vs. 3.51 for men).
At the country level, only the Gini index significantly
predicted trust in scientists in general, whereas no
country-level variables were significant predictors of
trust in climate scientists. To ensure that these find-
ings are not driven by a few extreme cases, we re-
ran our models after excluding the top three coun-
tries with the highest and lowest trust gaps. The find-
ings remained largely unchanged, indicating that the
observed patterns are not driven by these outliers (see
supplementary materials for details).
To further investigate the relationship between
political orientation and trust in scientists and climate
scientists, we conducted a series of multilevel regres-
sion analyses (see supplementary materials for ana-
lyses on other predictors). First, we examined left-
right and liberal-conservative political ideologies as
predictors in separate models. Figure 3indicates that
political ideology is a stronger positive predictor of
trust in climate scientists than in scientists in some
countries, while it predicts lower trust in other coun-
tries. These observed patterns were supported by fur-
ther multilevel linear models. We fitted models which
combined trust measures as a single outcome, with
trust target (scientists vs. climate scientists) entered
as a categorical within-subjects predictor and includ-
ing an interaction between trust target and polit-
ical orientation. The trust target variable significantly
interacted with right-leaning ideology both overall
(B=−.035, p=.028) and in 44 countries. Similarly,
conservatism interacted with trust target both overall
(B=−.041, p=.004) and in 40 countries. In most
countries, right-leaning ideology and conservatism
were stronger negative predictors of trust in climate
scientists than trust in scientists (N=28 and 29 coun-
tries, respectively). Conversely, in a subset of coun-
tries, right-leaning and conservative political orienta-
tions were stronger positive predictors of trust in cli-
mate scientists than in scientists (N=16 and 11 coun-
tries, respectively). Finally, multilevel models using
2
Environ. Res. Lett. 20 (2025) 061002 O Ghasemi et al
Figure 1. Trust in climate scientists versus scientists in general across 68 countries. Panel (A) shows the mean trust in climate
scientists (green) and scientists in general (purple) across countries. The vertical lines show the overall mean trust in climate
scientists (green), and scientists (purple). Weighted t-tests were conducted for each country, and countries with significant
differences (p<.05) are shown in bold and with an asterisk. Panel (B) presents a global map depicting the difference in trust
between climate scientists and scientists in general. The scores were calculated by subtracting trust in climate scientists from trust
in scientists. Positive scores (purple) indicate greater trust in scientists, while negative scores (green) reflect higher trust in climate
scientists. Countries without data are shaded in light grey. A zoomed-in map of Europe is shown to the left for clarity. Panel (B)
illustrates the direction and size of trust differences, with significance testing shown in Panel (A).
the trust difference score (i.e. the trust gap between
scientists and climate scientists)—calculated by sub-
tracting each individual’s trust ratings for climate sci-
entists from their trust ratings for scientists—showed
that right-leaning (B=.046, p=.005) and conser-
vative (B=.044, p=.002) political orientations pre-
dicted a larger trust gap. This indicates that higher
levels of right-leaning ideology and conservatism
were associated with a larger trust gap in favour of sci-
entists over climate scientists.
There are several potential explanations for these
findings. In some countries such as the United States,
Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, certain
political leaders have contributed to fostering dis-
trust in climate scientists [16]. These efforts, com-
bined with misinformation campaigns from vested
3
Environ. Res. Lett. 20 (2025) 061002 O Ghasemi et al
Figure 2. Predictors of trust in scientists and climate scientists. The estimates are derived from multilevel models with a
by-country random intercept with all predictors entered simultaneously. Country-level variables were scaled by the overall sample
means, while other variables were scaled individually for each country using that country’s mean. Due to certain variables not
being measured in all countries, these analyses are based on 51 countries (trust in scientists N=41,629; trust in climate scientists
N=41,623). Error bars indicate 95% CI.
interests in the fossil fuel industries, aim to question
the reality of human-caused climate change and the
scientific consensus around this issue [24–26] poten-
tially contributing to lower trust in climate scient-
ists. Furthermore, given the policy implications and
political relevance of climate science, it is perhaps
expected that trust levels in certain countries align
with political orientation [13]. Previous research has
identified that conservatism is associated with greater
trust in scientists in disciplines that foster economic
production (e.g. materials and agricultural science)
and lower trust in scientists in disciplines that study
the impact of economic production on the envir-
onment (e.g. climatology and oceanography) [27].
Additionally, trust in scientists appears to be asso-
ciated with public perception of scientists’ political
leanings. In countries such as the United States, cli-
mate scientists are often perceived as more politically
liberal (i.e. left-leaning) than scientists in other fields
[28]. Since trust is often based on perceived value sim-
ilarity, left-leaning individuals may be more inclined
to trust climate scientists if they perceive their val-
ues as aligned, whereas right-leaning individuals may
exhibit greater scepticism if they perceive climate sci-
entists as advocating for values that are in tension with
their own [29].
One limitation of our research is the difference in
how trust is measured: trust in scientists was aver-
aged across ratings on four dimensions, while we
used a simplified single-item measure for trust in
climate scientists. Although we may assume that a
single-item measure approximates trust as informed
by these four dimensions [10], our data cannot verify
this assumption. A comparison between trust in cli-
mate scientists and each individual item of the trust in
scientists scale (see supplementary materials) showed
4
Environ. Res. Lett. 20 (2025) 061002 O Ghasemi et al
Figure 3. The relationship between right-leaning (1: left-leaning—5: right-leaning) and conservative (1: liberal—5: conservative)
political orientation and trust in scientists and climate scientists (1: very low—5: very high) across countries. These estimates
come from four weighted multilevel linear regression models with one political orientation variable as a predictor and random
slopes predicting trust. The predicted coefficients (global fixed effect plus random slopes) for each country are shown here, while
the random effects across countries are presented in the supplementary materials. Countries with a positive association between
right-leaning or conservative ideologies and trust scores are coloured red, while those with negative associations are coloured
blue. Countries without data are shaded light grey.
that participants rated their trust in climate scient-
ists significantly lower than their perceptions of sci-
entists’ expertise, intelligence, qualifications, honesty,
ethics, sincerity, concern for others’ well-being, and
eagerness to improve lives. Conversely, participants
rated their trust in climate scientists significantly
higher than their perceptions of scientists’ openness
to feedback, consideration of others’ interests, will-
ingness to be transparent, and attentiveness to differ-
ent perspectives. In contrast to prior findings, which
highlighted scientists’ morality as a stronger pre-
dictor of trust than competence [10], our study found
the largest trust gap in the competence dimension.
Therefore, caution is necessary when directly com-
paring levels of trust due to the differing measure-
ment methods and the greater potential for measure-
ment error with a single-item approach.
In conclusion, while trust in climate scientists is
moderately high, it tends to be slightly lower than
trust in scientists overall. Such lower trust may reflect
the successful efforts of the conservative counter-
movement to sow doubt about the integrity of cli-
mate scientists and their conclusions [6], and consist-
ent with this idea, there was relatively greater con-
sensus across the political spectrum in terms of the
trustworthiness of scientists as compared to the trust-
worthiness of climate scientists. As trust in scientists
is important for accepting recommendations groun-
ded in scientists’ findings [2], this trust gap may help
explain why there has been insufficient action on cli-
mate change. In order to close this trust gap, future
studies could test interventions to increase trust in
climate scientists to levels comparable with other
scientists especially in those countries with the largest
trust gaps. While promoting trust in climate sci-
entists is valuable, uncritical trust is not necessarily
beneficial [30]. Increasing trust alone does not suffice
to address climate change or other societal challenges.
Trust is shaped by broader political, media, and insti-
tutional contexts [31], and increasing trust should go
hand in hand with transparency in the scientific pro-
cess, policy making, and communication of uncer-
tainty, as well as public engagement rather than blind
acceptance.
Data availability statement
The data that support the findings of this study are
openly available at the following URL/DOI: https://
osf.io/bkvpa/.
Acknowledgment
MA and RMR acknowledge the support of the
John Templeton Foundation (Grant ID: 62631). SKS
acknowledges the support of the Australian Research
Council (Project Number: DE240100001).
5
Environ. Res. Lett. 20 (2025) 061002 O Ghasemi et al
Conflict of interest
Authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Ethics statement
This study uses data from the TISP project, which
received ethical approval from Harvard University
(protocol #IRB22-1046) and was exempt from full
IRB review. All participants provided informed con-
sent, and ethical approvals or exemptions were
obtained by TISP collaborators at their respective
institutions, adhering to local regulations.
CRediT statement
Conceptualisation, Investigation, Writing—Review &
editing: All. Methodology, Supervision: VC, NGM.
Data curation: NGM, VC, OG. Formal analysis: OG,
NS, JK, NGM. Visualisation: OG, NS. Validation: MA.
Project administration: OG, VC, NGM. Writing—
Original draft: OG, SKS, VC.
ORCID iDs
Omid Ghasemi https://orcid.org/0000-0001-
7511-5580
Viktoria Cologna https://orcid.org/0000-0003-
3706-8669
Niels G Mede https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5707-
7568
Samantha K Stanley https://orcid.org/0000-0002-
1272-5768
Noel Strahm https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9837-
8869
Robert Ross https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8711-
1675
Mark Alfano https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5879-
8033
John R Kerr https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6606-
5507
Mathew D Marques https://orcid.org/0000-0002-
5486-650X
Sebastian Berger https://orcid.org/0000-0003-
2392-1024
John C Besley https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8778-
4973
Cameron Brick https://orcid.org/0000-0002-
7174-8193
Marina Joubert https://orcid.org/0000-0003-
0178-1796
Edward Maibach https://orcid.org/0000-0003-
3409-9187
Sabina Mihelj https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8557-
2504
Ben R Newell https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1898-
205X
Naomi Oreskes https://orcid.org/0000-0001-
6122-9843
Mike S Schäfer https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0847-
7503
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