Debate and controversy around global challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic and human-induced climate change present us with a complex picture of how ”expertise” or “facts” alone are insufficient for shoring up public, political, and internal trust in science. This issue is simultaneously local and global, historical and contemporary. 

The MPIWG’s Institute’s Colloquium 2021–22 series “Trusting Science” seeks to explore this topic from interdisciplinary, transnational, and longue durée perspectives. Through several talks and panels traversing history, philosophy, sociology, political science, and science and technology studies (STS), we hope to inspire new analytical insights and a basis for further discussions around trust in science. What do humanities and social sciences perspectives bring to our understanding of such issues? To what extent are any of these matters unique? Should we trust science at all, and if so, how can public trust in science and trust within sciences and scholarship be built? 

Ultimately, “Trusting Science” seeks to facilitate broad interdisciplinary discussions around social, political, and internal (dis-)trust in science, provide inspiration for further academic research, and open up discussion around the multifaceted challenges faced by historians, social scientists, scientists, and medical practitioners as they confront this issue on local and global scales.