GoKawiilMany pressing issues facing society relate to science and technology: from artificial intelligence and pandemic preparedness to the transition to clean energy. Governments, advised by scientists, will decide how countries respond. Yet, the public is rarely consulted on decisions that shape many people’s lives.
Mechanisms for public input into science policy exist in some nations, but remain the exception rather than the rule1. Communication runs mainly between policymakers and academics2,3.
Have people stopped trusting science? The data tell a surprising story
Inside academia, the picture is similar. Ways to involve citizens in policy-relevant research are well studied, but under-resourced and under-practised4. And the methods that turn research into forms of evidence that are useful for policymaking — including systematic reviews and analyses — rarely involve the public5.
At a time when trust in governments is falling across many democracies6 and populists are casting scientists and academic institutions as untrustworthy ‘elites’7, it’s crucial to make the general public a part of research and policy. This would foster trust and make academic research and government policies seem more legitimate. People are more likely to support — and champion — science advice that they helped to generate8.
Democratizing research and science-policy processes will mean rethinking how scientists, citizens and policymakers interact. Here, we highlight six steps that governments and academic institutions can take to put the public at the heart of their work, reflecting outcomes of a workshop in Fairfax, Virginia, in September 2025. (Other attendees at the workshop, who contributed to this article, are listed as co-signatories in the supplementary information).
Involve the public in research
Research produced jointly with the community is more likely to be aligned with real-world policy priorities, increasing its salience. For instance, between 2015 and 2018, the European Union invited citizens across 30 countries to co-create research priorities for its Horizon 2020 funding-programme agenda. Whereas 16 expert-led foresight reports recommended prioritizing technological advances, citizens placed higher value on strong communities, health and well-being, education and local economies9.
Public involvement can also make technical evidence more readily interpretable and thus potentially more trustworthy. In 2016, for instance, UK researchers and the London-based charity Sense About Science worked with parents to co-design a website that explained in simple terms why hospitals cannot be easily compared with one another when it comes to survival rates for congenital heart surgery. This helped to overcome previous misinterpretations and alarm around the publication of crude league tables.
The complex truth about trust in science
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