Trust in science: what’s really happening

Hello Nature readers,
Today is a shorter Briefing than usual because Nature’s news team is ‘on retreat’ — although of course, the Briefing never surrenders. Today we hear that the Vera Rubin Observatory is scanning the skies more widely than ever, learn that paying peer reviewers seems to speed up the process and explore public trust in science.

Rubin opens its eye to the big wide sky

Yesterday, the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile started a 10-year mission to image the sky with unprecedented breadth. In its first year, its nightly sweeps will generate more data than all previous optical telescopes combined. And this is just the beginning. “The first year of data is not going to be great for faint stuff, but as they build up the data over 10 years, it gets better and better,” says astrophysicist Aaron Romanowsky.

Trust in science: what’s really happening

Trust in science has collapsed — right? The evidence says that it’s not necessarily so. From a global perspective, public trust in science and scientists is high. Trust has dropped in certain groups, notably among Republican-leaning people in the United States. And research in the United Kingdom shows that the proportion of people who have “a lot” of trust in science tends to be lower among politically right-leaning groups than those on the left. In many countries, people are also increasingly questioning definitive evidence on divisive issues such as vaccines, partly because scientific information is being drowned out online.

Did big oil tarnish a landmark study?

An influential climate study published 22 years ago has the fingerprints of oil executives all over it, reports ProPublica. In it, researchers identified a portfolio of actions they called “stabilization wedges” that used existing technology to limit atmospheric carbon dioxide. However, the study was funded by the oil company BP and much of its content was shaped by the company, finds ProPublica’s investigation. The result: too much focus on carbon capture and storage, an unproven idea that some think could neutralize some ongoing greenhouse gas emissions. A former BP exec says the company “did not oversee” the paper and took academic freedom seriously, and the study’s authors deny BP had any control over the paper’s scientific content.