Scientists should admit their covid errors to regain the trust they lost

In 2019, only 13% of Americans were distrustful enough to say they werent confident in scientists to act in the publics best interest..

Public health researchers and officials seem to think that rebuilding trust is just a matter of clearer, more persuasive communication..

Sandro Galea, dean of public health at Boston University, delves into what public health got wrong in his new book, Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health For an Illiberal Time, to be published soon..

(Scientists are still more trusted than journalists, by the way.) And yet science works because scientific methods were developed to smooth out the work of fallible humans into a body of reliable and useful knowledge..

This public health excess fed into existing pockets of irrational paranoia, giving new power to gurus on YouTube who proclaimed that the government was covering up deadly vaccine side effects as well as the real cure for covid, apart from UFO aliens and plots to take away everyones property..