Abstract

In 2019 public trust in politicians was at an all-time low in many parts of the world. Then again, it had been low for quite some time.1 Public trust in epistemic authority is a more complicated matter. The success of many right-wing politicians—Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro, etc.—is partly due to their efforts to discredit traditional sources of information, including the “mainstream media” and whichever scientific institutions prove inconvenient to their political interests. But worries about the erosion of epistemic standards in public discourse are easily overstated, and some polling data have shown that publics are not as distrustful of experts as we might fear.2Nonetheless, there are some political and social...