Talks

Trust in Science and What Lies Ahead for Humanity

Friday June 24, 10:20, Lobby NLG

Richard Axel, Nobel laureate; Professor of Pathology and Biochemistry at Columbia University; Codirector of the University's Zuckerman Institute; Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Jeff Kahn, Andreas C. Dracopoulos Director of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics; Robert Henry Levi and Ryda Hecht Levi Professor of Bioethics and Public Policy

Denial of scientific data and doubts about vaccination peaked during the pandemic, creating new challenges for the scientific community. But what can scientists do to regain people’s trust?
Richard Axel and Jeff Kahn discussed, on stage, one of the most important modern contradictions related to science. “We have great discoveries, but the greater the discoveries, the greater the mistrust of the people,” said Kahn, asking Axel to comment on this statement.

Referring to the trust of the general population during the pandemic, Axel, a Nobel laureate, said, “The last time we were in this room, three years ago, we could not have imagined nor calculated the enormous responsibility that medicine had to bear, because it had to address this unprecedented pandemic.” In this context, he spoke about the immense contribution of the innovative RNA vaccine technology, genomics, and gene therapy to disease prevention and treatment.

When asked by Kahn about the causes of people's mistrust despite the remarkable discoveries, Axel said that the public has gained a more in-depth view of how the field of science is progressing. He also commented, however, that there is no absolute truth in science. “Since there is no absolute truth, there is a chance—even a small one—that the scientific information we receive is incorrect,” he explained.
As regards the responsibility of scientists, Axel said, “We need to educate the public, and this was not done adequately during this pandemic. We still need to select people who have read Aristotle.” He explained the significance of the Aristotelian concepts of “ethos, pathos and logos” in science, and pointed out that these were not taken into account in the manner used to manage the pandemic.

In closing the discussion, Axel stressed that the perception of trust involves the concept of risk and that is why communication is extremely important. Then Kahn said, “One of the challenges of communication is for the public to know who to trust.”