Science Advances, demonstrates that both the person communicating the information and the information content can affect the public’s trust in the scientific claim, as well as the science itself.Stay informed with live updates on the current COVID-19 outbreak and visit our coronavirus hub for more advice on prevention and treatment.Ideally, the best available scientific evidence should inform government policy decisions.
However, for many reasons, this generally accepted principle is not always the case.The nature of scientific inquiry means that there is always some degree of uncertainty in the models used to create policy decisions.Historically, this degree of uncertainty, even if slight, has been used to discredit policies that are not.