Evidence, Testimony, and Trust: How the COVID-19 Pandemic is Exacerbating the Crisis of Trust in Science

In this paper, I consider an example of fast science produced in the early stages of the pandemic and the lasting effects of the study on public safety and trust in science. Due to pressures intrinsic to contemporary science and from the pandemic to produce research on COVID quickly, studies on COVID-19 that did not meet rigorous scientific standards were used to form public health policies and recommendations. I argue that the fast science produced for COVID-19, which caused many public health policies and recommendations to change throughout the pandemic, confuses the publics and erodes their trust in science.