Americans Trust Science More Than Almost Anyone — and Are More Divided About It

Americans trust science more than almost anyone else on Earth — and are more divided about it than almost anyone else, too. That is the striking double finding of the newest edition of the Wellcome Global Monitor, a survey of more than 140,000 adults across 140 countries that paints the United States as a global outlier in both enthusiasm for science and polarisation over it.

The headline numbers are unambiguous. Fifty-two percent of Americans say they have "a lot" of trust in science — exactly double the global figure of 26 percent. Americans are also more eager for vaccines than their peers: 45 percent say they would want a nurse- or doctor-recommended vaccine "right away," compared with just 28 percent in Germany. And while the share of people worldwide who agree that science benefits most people in their society has fallen from 42 percent in 2018 to 37 percent in 2025, the American figure has moved in the opposite direction, rising from 48 percent to 57 percent.

For a country that often appears to be tearing itself apart over vaccines, public health and expertise, these are surprising results. But the aggregate statistics conceal the real story — one of a nation where the most educated and secular citizens are racing toward science while other groups watch from a distance.

The divide behind the average

STAT's analysis of the Wellcome data shows that the United States is far more divided on science than comparable nations, and the fault lines are deep. The religious divide is the starkest: across high-income countries, there is on average a five-percentage-point gap between religious and non-religious people who say science benefits most people in their country. In the United States, that gap is 24 percentage points.

A similar chasm — 19 percentage points — separates urban and rural Americans on the question of science's benefits, versus just three points across other wealthy nations. Education divides Americans sharply as well: only 47 percent of Americans without a four-year degree believe science benefits most people, compared with 71 percent of college graduates.

These are not small statistical wobbles. They describe two Americas experiencing science in fundamentally different ways: one for whom it is a visible, daily benefit, and one for whom it is a distant institution.

The twist: nobody is souring — some are surging

Here the survey delivers its most counterintuitive finding. America's divide is not growing because sceptical groups are losing faith in science. It is growing because enthusiastic groups are gaining it faster.

Religious Americans, historically among the less trusting, have actually become more positive: the share who say science benefits most people rose four percentage points between 2018 and 2025, from 46 to 50 percent. They are also more likely than religious people in peer countries to want vaccines promptly. Non-college graduates moved three points in the same direction, and they too outpace their international counterparts on vaccine eagerness.

The surge is concentrated among the highly educated and the secular. College graduates' appreciation of science's benefits jumped 13 percentage points over seven years; for secular Americans the increase was 15 points. In short, the country is divided not because some Americans are turning against science, but because others are embracing it with growing conviction while the rest hold roughly steady.

Why America answers differently

Part of the explanation may lie in how Americans answer surveys at all. Matthew Motta, a Boston University public-health researcher who studies public opinion, notes that Americans tend to be more extreme responders than people in other countries — more likely to pick the strongest available answer in either direction. That tendency inflates both the trust figures and the distrust figures.

Consider vaccines: only 8 percent of Germans say they would refuse vaccines entirely, compared with 13 percent of Americans — the highest anti-vaccine share among the countries compared. But the vast majority of Germans who are hesitant say they would prefer to think about it for some time, while more Americans rush to one pole or the other. The result is a country that looks simultaneously more pro-science and more anti-science than its peers.

Structural factors matter too. Wellcome found that trust in science tracks closely with confidence in a nation's health-care system — and just 40 percent of Americans report a lot of confidence in U.S. hospitals and clinics, a figure on par with Portugal and Uruguay. As Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, puts it, many Americans simply cannot see how science benefits them: a city dweller treated for cancer at a top university medical centre experiences science's impact directly, while someone in a rural area who must travel long distances for basic hospital care does not.

Politics plays its role as well. Yotam Ophir, a communication researcher at the University at Buffalo, traces diverging views on science between America's political parties to the Tea Party movement of the 2010s, amplified during the Trump presidency — with anti-science sentiment from top political officials likely deepening the divide further.

How the survey was done

The Wellcome Global Monitor is one of the largest studies of its kind. Funded by Wellcome, the British foundation focused on scientific research, the survey has been fielded in 2018, 2020 and 2025. The latest edition was administered as part of the Gallup World Poll through a combination of in-person, telephone and online interviews with more than 140,000 adults, with global findings weighted to reflect the relative populations of the countries surveyed.

The survey itself offers no explanation for why the United States outpaces its peers on trust — the researchers report the pattern without diagnosing it. But the experts who study the data converge on a prescription that has less to do with arguing and more to do with listening.

Meet people where they are

Scientists, the experts say, need to get better at showing the benefits of science in people's everyday lives — and to stop expecting the public to trust them blindly. "What we need to do is be better communicators, not better debaters," Castrucci says. "We are not going to be able to lecture people into trusting us."

Mark Henderson, Wellcome's executive director of corporate affairs and engagement, offers the same advice in plainer terms: meet people where they are. Approach them with understanding, engagement and respect, he says, and you will get a better outcome. It is not, as he wryly notes, rocket science — though he is often surprised by how hard people in the scientific community find it.

The survey's message is ultimately an optimistic one wrapped in a warning. The groups historically least trusting of science are not drifting away; they are inching closer, and they outpace their peers abroad. But the benefits of science are still not reaching a large swath of Americans in ways they can see and feel. Until they do, the country will remain what the data shows it to be: the most science-trusting nation in the survey, and one of the most divided.