What Is Epistemic Public Trust in Science?

Abstract

We provide an analysis of public’s having warranted epistemic trust in science, that is, the conditions under which the public may be said to have well-placed trust in the scientists as providers of information. We distinguish between basic and enhanced epistemic trust in science and provide necessary conditions for both. We then present the controversy regarding the (alleged) connection between autism and measles-mumps-rubella vaccination as a case study to illustrate our analysis. The realization of warranted epistemic public trust in science requires various societal conditions, which we briefly introduce in the concluding section.