A King's College survey finds UK trust in scientists hinging on perceived allegiance
Sixty-three percent of UK adults report high trust in scientists, but the attitude most closely tied to that trust is whether scientists seem to be on their side, and that perception splits Reform supporters from Greens by 39 points.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- A survey of UK adults finds trust in scientists strong in aggregate, with 63% reporting high trust in scientists in general.
- The study reports that trust rests less on whether scientists are seen as experts than on whether people feel scientists are on the side of people like them.
- Half of Reform supporters say scientists are in cahoots with politicians and businesses, compared with 27% of the public as a whole.
- Climate scientists emerge as the most politically polarizing of the scientists studied, with Reform supporters the most cynical about them.
Why it matters
- What it limits constraint Communications budgets built on explaining the evidence better are aimed at a driver this study ranks below perceived allegiance, so more explanation may buy less trust than its business case assumes.
- Who's exposed exposure Research institutions that depend on cross-party consent for funding and advisory access are exposed as Reform support grows, because half of that party's supporters already read scientists as collaborators with politicians and business.
- Who has to decide decision The one association that holds across occupation and education is personal acquaintance with a scientist, which makes contact programmes a testable spend rather than a goodwill gesture.
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The party gap is the smaller of the two splits this survey opens on the same question. Among people with low trust in scientists, 7% think scientists are on the side of people like them; among high trusters, 68% do [10]. That is a spread of 61 points [17] against the 39 between Reform and Green supporters [8]. It is also where the finding needs care: both items sit in the same questionnaire, so "scientists are on my side" and "I trust scientists" may be two readings of one underlying attitude rather than a cause and its effect. The regression modelling ranks correlates [3]. It cannot tell you which one moved first.
The values numbers complicate the identity reading rather than confirming it. Just 34% of high trusters agree that scientists have the same values as they do [12], which leaves about two thirds of the most trusting group declining to say so [18]. Trust appears to survive plain value disagreement more easily than it survives the suspicion of a competing agenda: 40% of low trusters say scientists care more about social and political causes than about scientific progress, against 10% of high trusters [11], and 38% of low trusters agree that scientists are "too woke", against 8% of high trusters [13].
Reform supporters are also the group most willing to displace scientific evidence outright: 48% say society should rely more on common sense than on scientific studies, against 24% of the public, exactly double [15][19]. Conservative supporters sit at 50% on the allegiance question, 18 points above Reform and 21 below the Greens [9][20], so the division does not run cleanly along a left-right axis.
The thing this does not tell you is whether any of it changes behaviour. A survey measures stated attitude, and the write-up reports no party-level subgroup sizes, so the precision of the 39 points cannot be checked from it; at the overall sample size of 4,262 [2], an estimate near 50% carries roughly plus or minus 1.5 points of sampling error at 95% confidence [21], and party subsamples will be considerably looser. One result does survive an obvious confound test: knowing a scientist personally is linked to greater trust regardless of occupational or educational level [16], which rules out the reading that personal acquaintance is just a proxy for being professional-class.
The study reports actions that could raise trust in future [23], and perceptions of openness and transparency matter across different types of scientists [7]. Outright distrust, meanwhile, remains a minority position [6]. So the operational target is the middle. On the allegiance question the middling group sits 15 points above low trusters and 46 points below high trusters [22], clustering with the sceptics rather than splitting the difference, and that is the group on which an allegiance-based message would have to prove itself before anyone treats this correlation as a lever.
What to watch
- Whether the full report publishes party-level subsample sizes and regression coefficients, which would show how much of trust the allegiance item explains.
- Any randomised message test of whether shifting perceived allegiance moves trust, rather than another cross-sectional wave.
- Whether a repeat wave tracks the middling trust group specifically, since movement there decides whether the aggregate figure holds.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence70
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence68
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
Trust in scientists in the UK is strong overall, with 63% indicating they have high trust in scientists in general.
- [2]
The study was led by the Policy Institute at King's College London and Sense About Science, funded by Wellcome, and is based on a nationally representative survey of 4,262 UK adults conducted with YouGov.
- [3]
The survey was combined with regression modelling to identify the factors most associated with trust, and a segmentation analysis grouping the public by types of trust, ranging from "Science Advocates" to "Science Critics".
- [4]
The research finds trust rests less on whether scientists are seen as experts and more on whether people feel scientists are "on the side of people like them", a driver that outweighs other perceptions of trustworthiness such as expertise.
- [5]
Reform supporters are far less trusting of, and more cynical about, scientists in general and climate scientists in particular, and climate scientists emerge as the most politically polarizing of all the scientists studied.
- [6]
Outright distrust of scientists remains a minority position.
- [7]
Perceptions of openness and transparency are vital to trust across different types of scientists.
- [8]
Only 32% of Reform UK supporters feel scientists are on the side of people like them, compared with 71% of Green supporters, a 39-point gap.
- [9]
On the same question, Labour supporters are at 69%, Liberal Democrat supporters at 65% and Conservative supporters at 50%.
- [10]
Only 7% of people with low trust in scientists in general think scientists are on their side, compared with 22% of those scoring in the middle and 68% of those with high trust.
- [11]
Four in 10 (40%) of those with low trust and a quarter (25%) of those with middling trust feel scientists care more about social and political causes than about scientific progress, compared with 10% of those with high trust.
- [12]
A third (34%) of those with high trust agree scientists have the same values as they do, compared with 8% of middling trusters and 2% of low trusters.
- [13]
Low trusters (38%) are nearly five times as likely as high trusters (8%) to say "scientists are too woke", with middling trusters at 23%.
- [14]
Reform supporters are by far the most likely to say scientists are "in cahoots" with politicians and businesses, at 50% compared with 27% for the public as a whole, with supporters of other parties much closer to the public overall.
- [15]
48% of Reform supporters say society should rely more on common sense than scientific studies, compared with 24% of the public as a whole.
- [16]
Knowing a scientist personally is linked to greater trust in scientists regardless of occupational or educational levels.
- [17]
The gap on the "on the side of people like them" question between low trusters (7%) and high trusters (68%) is 61 points, larger than the 39-point Reform-Green gap.
- [18]
Since 34% of high trusters agree scientists share their values, about 66% of high trusters do not agree, a figure that includes those who are neutral or unsure.
- [19]
Reform supporters' 48% agreement that society should rely more on common sense than scientific studies is exactly double the public's 24%, a 24-point gap.
- [20]
Conservative supporters' 50% on the allegiance question is 18 points above Reform's 32% and 21 points below the Greens' 71%.
- [21]
At a sample of 4,262, the 95% confidence interval on an estimate near 50% is about plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.
- [22]
On the allegiance question, middling trusters (22%) sit 15 points above low trusters (7%) and 46 points below high trusters (68%).
- [23]
The research reveals key actions that could help increase levels of trust in scientists in future.
Sources
2 independent publishers whose own reporting we read for this story.
- nature.comPeople trust scientists seen to be 'on their side', UK study find
1 article · September 10, 2026
- phys.orgPolarized trust in scientists driven by values, identity and politics
1 article · September 9, 2026
Topics and entities
Topics
- Public trust in science
- Political Polarization