Seminar
The politicization of public trust in science: causes, consequences, and cures
- Roderik Rekker
- Date
- Friday 9 October 2026
- Time
- Series
- CWTS Research Seminars
- Location
-
Willem Einthoven
Kolffpad 1
2333 BN Leiden - Room
- Online & common rooms at CWTS, with speaker online.
About the seminar
Citizens’ trust in science, as well as their factual beliefs more generally, are increasingly connected to their political ideology and party preference. On a variety of issues such as COVID-19 and climate change, citizens’ acceptance of scientific knowledge depends on where they stand on the political spectrum. This lecture will discuss how this politicization is fueled by populist parties and what non-populist politicians, journalists, and scientists can do to counter this development.
About the speaker
Roderik Rekker is a political scientist and a psychologist, currently working as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands). His research focuses on stability and change in political attitudes across time, generations, and the lifespan, as well as on political polarization over facts and science. He is also affiliated with the Institute of Philosophy at Leibniz University Hannover (Germany).