Debate of the day

Is there a distrust of scientists?

Audio 29:30

A range of Pfizer BioNTech vaccines against Covid-19.

AP - Francisco Seco

By: Sébastien Duhamel Follow

1 min

Is there today a distrust of science?

The scientific word is increasingly questioned, even discredited.

There are, for example, and this sometimes makes you smile, the “platistes”: those who believe that the Earth is flat.

There are also, and this is much less laughable, the “climate skeptics”: those who doubt global warming, its causes and its consequences.

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Even more recently, at the height of the pandemic, we heard from the “covido-skeptics”: those who doubted the mortality or the very existence of Covid-19, and those who doubted the vaccines proposed to respond to it.

Wacky theories have proliferated, often to the detriment of scientific knowledge.

So, is this indeed a real distrust of science?

How can we explain and fix it? 

To discuss

- Michel Dubois

, sociologist research director at the CNRS  

- Yves Charpak

, doctor specializing in public health and president of the Charpak foundation, the spirit of science

- Frédéric Worms

, philosopher, professor of contemporary philosophy, director of the École Normale Supérieure

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  • Health and medicine

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