Fewer than one in five people worldwide have a high level of trust in scientists, according to new research by the Wellcome Trust.

The world¡¯s biggest survey into public attitudes to health and science ¨C the ¨C includes polling of more than 140,000 people from more than 140 countries.

While 18 per cent of people have high trust in scientists, 54 per cent have a medium level of trust, 14 per cent have low trust and 13 per cent said they ¡°don¡¯t know¡±.

A third of people in Northern Europe, Central Asia and Australia and New Zealand have high trust, while it is about one in 10 in Central and South America.

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Trust in science and scientists is seen as a key factor in improving health across the world.

¡°No matter how great your idea, how exciting your new treatment, how robust your science, it must be accepted by the people who stand to benefit from it,¡± said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust.

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The key factors identified as having an impact on people¡¯s trust in scientists are their level of education and their trust in state institutions. Those educated to university level are much more likely to have trust in science.

¡°We were driven by the belief that people¡¯s trust in and attitude towards science mattered,¡± said Dr Simon Chaplin, director of culture and society at Wellcome.

¡°Crucially, trust in science seems to correlate strongly with trust in government, the judiciary and the military and this should be a wake-up call to everyone who likes to think of science as somehow neutral and separate from the societies within which we live.¡±

More than half the world¡¯s population (57 per cent) don¡¯t think that they know much ¨C if anything ¨C about science, and almost one in five (19 per cent) believe that it does not benefit them personally.

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In high-income countries, those who say that they are finding it ¡°difficult to get by¡± financially are about three times as likely as people who say that they are ¡°living comfortably¡± to be sceptical about whether science benefits society as a whole, or them personally.

Even when men and women report equal level of science education attainment, men are more likely to claim greater science knowledge, the survey found.

A total of 49 per cent of men said that they knew ¡°some¡± or ¡°a lot¡± about science, compared with 38 per cent of women.

This gender gap was biggest in Northern Europe (75 per cent men compared with 58 per cent women) despite it being a region of the world with ¡°one of the highest levels of investment in scientific research¡±, said Dr Chaplin.

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¡°We have to work harder to make sure that science education, the career structures of science and the research culture itself support gender equality and reflect the demographic make-up of the societies in which we operate,¡± he added.

¡°Exclusion and mistrust go hand in hand and they can have disastrous consequences for health.¡±

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nick.mayo@timeshighereducation.com