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Yes—but the evidence shows an association, not proof that financial hardship by itself causes distrust. The 2026 Wellcome Global Monitor finds a substantial trust gap between people who feel financially secure and those struggling to get by, while a separate 68-country study finds that trust in scientists remains moderately high overall.

What the Wellcome Global Monitor found

Wellcome’s 2026 Global Monitor surveyed more than 140,000 people in 140 countries, with fieldwork conducted in 2025. It asked respondents how much they trusted science and about their financial circumstances, institutions and healthcare experiences.

Measure Finding How to read it
Trust in science, 2025 72% reported “some” or “a lot” of trust This combines moderate and high trust.
Trusting science “a lot” by financial situation 39% among people living comfortably on their present income; 20% among people finding it difficult to get by A wide gap appears when people assess their own financial security.
Trusting science “a lot” globally 26% This is the highest trust category, not the combined “some or a lot” measure.
Trusting science “a lot” and healthcare confidence 43% among people with a lot of confidence in their country’s hospitals and health clinics Positive healthcare experience is associated with stronger trust.

The financial comparison is based on subjective circumstances: whether people feel they are living comfortably or struggling to meet their needs. That measure is different from household income recorded in a currency, and it captures insecurity that objective income can miss.

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How large is the financial-hardship gap?

In the 2025 data, people who said they were living comfortably were nearly twice as likely to select “a lot” of trust as people who said they were finding it difficult to get by. The difference had widened from 13 percentage points in 2018 to 19 points in 2025.

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This pattern does not establish that a missed bill, job loss or low income directly changes an individual’s view of science. Survey respondents were observed at one point in time, so other factors could influence both financial answers and trust. People under sustained pressure may have less confidence in institutions generally, less access to reliable information or more direct experience of public-service failures. Those are plausible pathways, not causal findings demonstrated by this survey.

What else is linked to trust in science?

Institutions and corruption

The Wellcome report finds lower trust where people describe national institutions as weak, report less confidence in government or perceive more corruption. Countries with greater economic inequality also tend to show lower trust in science. These are country-level relationships, so they should not be used to label every person in a country or to infer an individual cause.

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Healthcare experience

Confidence in hospitals and health clinics tracks closely with science trust. The report’s highest healthcare-confidence group had a substantially larger share selecting “a lot” of trust than the global average. This suggests that whether people see science working through services they use may matter alongside abstract opinions about research.

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Economic conditions and perceived hardship

A 2024 analysis by Fuglsang covering 145 countries reached a similar conclusion about the importance of personal economic perception. Subjective income—how financially secure people feel—was more strongly related to trust in science than relative income, such as a person’s position compared with others. The relationship varied with institutional quality, the country’s economic climate, perceived effectiveness of science and trust in government.

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Fuglsang’s analysis is observational. It identifies patterns across countries, not a test showing that improving someone’s income will automatically increase trust.

Has trust in science fallen since Covid?

The Wellcome trend series points to a decline from the pandemic-era level, but the comparison requires care:

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Survey year People reporting “some” or “a lot” of trust in science People reporting “a lot” of trust
2018 77% Not stated in the trend figures
2020 80% Not stated in the trend figures
2025 72% Not stated in the trend figures

These trend figures use the 108 countries surveyed in all three waves, rather than every country in the 2025 sample. Wellcome also warns that China’s survey method changed between waves; because China has a very large population, that change affects the global totals. With or without China, however, the share reporting “a lot” of trust has fallen since 2020. The data show a post-2020 decline in reported trust, but they do not identify one universal cause or prove that the pandemic alone produced it.

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Why another major study reports moderately high trust

A separate preregistered study in Nature Human Behaviour surveyed 71,922 respondents in 68 countries between November 2022 and August 2023. Its international online questionnaire, offered in 37 languages, used quota samples weighted to national age, gender and education distributions.

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Question or scale Result
Overall trust in scientists Grand mean of 3.62 on a 1–5 scale
Scientists qualified to conduct high-impact research 78% agreed

There is no contradiction between this result and Wellcome’s decline. The studies used different years, countries, question wording and response scales. Wellcome separates “some” from “a lot” of trust in science; the Nature study measures trust in scientists on a five-point scale and asks about professional qualification. “Trust in science” can also refer to institutions, evidence and methods, while “trust in scientists” focuses on people who conduct research.

What the evidence can—and cannot—say

  • It can show an association: perceived financial security and trust in science move together in the Wellcome data, with the relationship also appearing in cross-national analysis.
  • It cannot prove a single cause: hardship may overlap with government distrust, corruption concerns, weak services, inequality or limited access to information.
  • Survey design matters: the Wellcome trend uses a consistent 108-country panel, while the Nature study is a separate 68-country online sample.
  • Online comparability has limits: the Nature study’s researchers note that internet access and translation can affect comparisons between countries.
  • Country averages are not individual diagnoses: a national association does not predict what any particular person believes.

Why the finding matters for public policy

Trust affects whether people accept health guidance, participate in research and use scientific advances. Wellcome chief executive John-Arne Røttingen summarized the practical stakes: “Public trust shapes whether scientific advances can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.”

The surveys imply that rebuilding trust may require more than better explanations of scientific results. Reliable public institutions, visible healthcare quality, lower corruption and economic conditions in which people feel secure are all connected to the trust patterns measured here. Communication can help, but the evidence does not support treating distrust as simply an information deficit or as a problem caused by financial hardship alone.

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