New research argues that science shouldn’t get involved in politics

A new study has found that scientific organisations risk losing public trust when they become involved in politics.

The study argues that when scientific organisations get involved in politics, such as supporting political candidates or taking public sides on political issues, people tend to trust them less. This happens even if the science they produce is still accurate and high-quality.

“Science Shouldn’t Be Political” published in the Journal of Academic Ethics, by Byron Hyde, Honorary Research Associate at the School of History, Law and Social Sciences at Bangor University, says that when science gets mixed with politics, people trust it less.

It found that if scientific information is presented alongside political messages, like supporting certain political positions, the public tends to see that science as less reliable, even if the research itself is solid.

Hyde explains, “Science is inseparable from society. It’s impossible to do science without public support which, in turn, requires the public to trust what science is doing.”

The main takeaway is that public trust is one of science’s most important assets, and political involvement can put that trust at risk.

The study also looked at common reasons scientists give for getting involved in politics, such as saying it’s their civic duty or that science is closely tied to public policy.

When the involvement of science in politics heightened around the 2020 US Presidential Election, major journals including Nature and Scientific American justified their endorsements of Joe Biden by claiming they needed to defend science from political threats.

The study concludes that these reasons usually aren’t strong enough to justify the loss of public trust. Political involvement is only justified in rare cases where the benefits, and the likelihood of achieving them, clearly outweigh the damage to credibility. These conditions weren’t met in 2020 because political endorsements were unnecessary and ineffective.

To help protect trust in science, the study suggests that, as a general rule, scientists should stay out of politics. It also recommends ethics reviews before institutions engage in political advocacy and making clearer rules separating the expression of scientific facts from political opinions.

Hyde emphasises, “In the long-term, there is a need for better science education so people can better tell the difference between scientific evidence and political arguments.”

You can read the full study here.