Trust in Political Science Research

Tadeas Cely

Aarhus University

Andrew L. Roberts

Northwestern University

The Issue of Lukewarm Trust

RQ: Do people trust political scientists specifically? Who trusts them? Can trust in research be strengthened through better practices?

Overall, scientists evoked positive perceptions given that all social evaluations and trust ratings were above the mid-point of the scales (though note that political scientists and economists evoked noticeably lower ratings of morality and trust compared to other occupations).

Gligorić, Kleef, and Rutjens (2024)

When asked how confident they were that various professions act in the best interests of the American public, Americans gave middling reviews of political scientists. [..] Confidence in political scientists is similar to that in journalists; Democrats are generally more confident, and Republicans less. Such confidence is generally less than that placed on economists, English professors, and historians.

Polarization Research Lab 2024

Extant Explanations

Why Do People Distrust Political Scientists and Their Research?

  1. Ideological Bias
  2. Relevance for Public Policy
  3. Research (and Other) Conduct

Beliefs and Priorities

Ideological Bias

  • A perceived mismatch between the beliefs of political scientists and those of the general population, often framed as a left-wing bias, Gross (2013); Van de Werfhorst (2020)
  • Politicization of the social sciences (e.g., economists, sociologists) is particularly consequential for public trust, Gligorić, Kleef, and Rutjens (2024); Gauchat (2012)

 

Public Policy Relevance

  • The perceived priorities and substantive focus of the discipline may undermine trust, Desch (2019)
  • Concerns may be amplified in contexts of public funding (Coburn, NSF)

Beliefs and Priorities

Hypotheses

H1: Political science is trusted less among individuals who perceive the discipline as ideologically biased.

 

H2: Political science is trusted less among individuals who perceive political scientists as unreliable guides to public policy.

Research Practices

Can trust be improved without changing the substantive beliefs or priorities of the discipline?

  • Research practices: limited methodological disclosure Havlík, Kapidžić, and Solska (2025); QRP and overclaiming, Nosek et al. (2022)
  • More attention, even the far right (e.g., Gold Standard Science)
  • But improvement, “credibility revolution”, open science, Grossmann (2021); Torreblanca et al. (2025)
  • Relative to attitude and identity congruence, potentially limited independent effect of methodological rigor on trust

H3: Methodological rigor can improve the trustworthiness of political science research.

H4: Practices that open research to external control can improve the trustworthiness of political science research.

Czech case

  • More representative of the field globally: most studies rely on U.S. samples, but Cologna et al. (2025)
    • Empirical focus is predominant (not to be taken for granted!), yet research remains semi-peripheral, Eberle et al. (2021)
    • Underdeveloped in terms of practices
  • Not at the cutting edge of current trends, given the post-communist context and its (dis)advantages
  • Convenience: Small scale allows for an expert survey of 118 (response rate of 44 %)

Methods

Mass Survey

  • 1530 respondents, online sample, quotas, July 2025
  • Main DV: How much do you personally trust political scientists?
  • OLS, with controls

Descriptive analyses

  • Social rootes of (dis)trust: U.S. and other cases show increasing cleavage patterns & partisan differences, Schulman et al. (n.d.)
  • Ideological bias (not just perceptions)

Experiment

  • Conjoint-style design (but scale): “Would you consider such research trustworthy?” (11-point scale)
  • Six repeated tasks + checks; seventh replicates the first
  • OLS with respondent-clustered robust SEs
  • Demanding, still: 67.4% passed strict attention check; 62% within ±1 point in replication task

Experiment

Example Vignette

Experiment

Attributes and Levels

Attribute Levels
Topic a. Representation
b. Democratic norms
c. Populism
d. Polarization
Methodological rigor a. Opinion, no method
b. Descriptive, no new data
c. Systematic analysis
d. Robust, replicated analysis
Openness to external control a. No practices
b. Preregistration
c. Open data
d. Peer review
Result (Favorability toward in-party) a. Very unfavorable
b. Unfavorable
c. Favorable
d. Very favorable

Expert Survey

Testing against expectations of political science community

  • Perceptions of trust
  • Ideological bias
  • Expectations about experimental results
  • Prevalent questionable research practices, Schneider et al. (2024)

All political science departments in Czechia, 9 universities, including PhD students

Response rates similar across gender, department type or seniority

Results

Trust in Political Scientists

Who Trust Political Scientists?

Predictor Est. 95% CI p Est. 95% CI p
Intercept 2.58 2.38–2.79 <0.001 3.32 2.98–3.66 <0.001
Income 0.09 0.03–0.14 0.002 0.05 -0.01–0.10 0.093
Woman -0.02 -0.11–0.08 0.742 0.02 -0.07–0.12 0.633
Age (std.) -0.13 -0.17–-0.08 <0.001 -0.11 -0.16–-0.06 <0.001
CECT (std.) 0.02 -0.03–0.07 0.391 0.02 -0.03–0.07 0.452
Ideology
Economic 0.00 -0.04–0.04 0.963
Social -0.01 -0.06–0.03 0.500
Transnational -0.16 -0.20–-0.12 <0.001
Education (reference: Elementary)
High school 0.09 -0.02–0.20 0.115 0.06 -0.05–0.17 0.258
University 0.06 -0.08–0.19 0.405 -0.03 -0.17–0.10 0.607
Settlement (reference: <2,000)
2,000–19,999 0.03 -0.11–0.16 0.721 0.03 -0.11–0.16 0.682
>20,000 0.03 -0.09–0.15 0.634 0.02 -0.10–0.14 0.693
N 1428 1428
R² / Adj. R² 0.031/0.026 0.080/0.073

Who Trust Political Scientists?

Predictor Est. 95% CI p Est. 95% CI p
Intercept 2.65 2.39–2.91 <0.001 1.62 1.38–1.85 <0.001
Policy Contribution 0.35 0.31–0.40 <0.001
Economic
Left-wing bias -0.26 -0.42–-0.09 0.003
Right-wing bias -0.11 -0.25–0.04 0.148
Social
Conservative bias -0.06 -0.22–0.11 0.500
Liberal bias -0.12 -0.27–0.02 0.091
Transnational
Anti-Western bias -0.05 -0.23–0.13 0.591
Pro-Western bias 0.16 0.02–0.31 0.029
Socioeconomic controls ✓ ✓
N 998 1356
R² / Adj. R² 0.048 / 0.034 0.169 / 0.165

Research Practices

Average Marginal Component Effects

Research Practices

Questionable Research Practice % SE N
Methodological Rigor
HARKing (Quantitative) 54% 7.2% 48
Ignoring Practical Significance 47% 6.9% 53
Redundant Publication 47% 7.1% 49
False Qualitative Claims 37% 6.9% 49
HARKing (Qualitative) 36% 7.1% 45
Overstating Results 33% 7.2% 43
P-Hacking 32% 7.7% 37
Misinterpreting Non-Significant Results 29% 7.0% 42
Undisclosed Data Recycling 25% 6.1% 51
External Control
Citation without Reading 77% 5.8% 52
Selective Citation to Appease Reviewers 60% 6.7% 53
Superficial Peer Review 42% 6.9% 52
Data/Methodology Non-Disclosure 24% 6.6% 42
Unqualified Peer Review Acceptance 23% 5.6% 57
Deliberate Omission of Contradictory Studies 18% 5.3% 51
Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest 13% 4.7% 52
Academic Integrity & Ethical Conduct
Excessive Self-Citation 56% 6.8% 54
Honorary Authorship 53% 6.7% 55
Biased Peer Review 21% 5.9% 48
Plagiarizing Unpublished Ideas 6% 3.4% 49

Conclusions

Conclusions

  • There is a trust problem, even in emerging contexts
  • But, we show that distrust is not strongly socially rooted
  • Rigor and open science practices can shape trustworthiness of our research
  • Limitations: External validity primarily. Research gets rarely reported so concisely and details on methods and practices might be mentioned even less.

References

Cologna, Viktoria, Niels Mede, Sebastian Berger, et al. 2025. “Trust in Scientists and Their Role in Society Across 68 Countries.” Nature Human Behaviour 9 (4): 713–30. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02090-5.
Desch, Michael. 2019. Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security. Princeton University Press.
Eberle, Jakub, Hubert Smekal, Petr Ocelík, and Oldřich Krpec. 2021. “Political Science in Central and Eastern Europe: Integration with Limited Convergence in Czechia.” European Political Science 20 (1): 183–203. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41304-020-00311-9.
Gauchat, Gordon. 2012. “Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere: A Study of Public Trust in the United States, 1974 to 2010.” American Sociological Review 77 (2): 167–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122412438225.
Gligorić, Vukašin, Gerben van Kleef, and Bastiaan Rutjens. 2024. “How Social Evaluations Shape Trust in 45 Types of Scientists.” PLOS ONE 19 (4): e0299621. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299621.
Gross, Neil. 2013. Why Are Professors Liberal and Why Do Conservatives Care? Harvard University Press.
Grossmann, Matt. 2021. How Social Science Got Better: Overcoming Bias with More Evidence, Diversity, and Self-Reflection. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197518977.001.0001.
Havlík, Vlastimil, Damir Kapidžić, and Magdalena Solska. 2025. “Methods in Political Science Journals in ‘Eastern’ Europe: Catching up with the ‘West’.” In The Application of Political Science Methods in Europe: A Multifaceted Dilemma, edited by Luca Verzichelli and Claudius Wagemann, 29–47. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-93841-2_2.
Nosek, Brian, Tom Hardwicke, Hannah Moshontz, Aurelien Allard, Katherine Corker, Anna Dreber, Fiona Fidler, et al. 2022. “Replicability, Robustness, and Reproducibility in Psychological Science.” Annual Review of Psychology 73 (1): 719–48.
Schneider, Jesper, Nick Allum, Jens Andersen, et al. 2024. “Is Something Rotten in the State of Denmark? Cross-National Evidence for Widespread Involvement but Not Systematic Use of Questionable Research Practices.” PLOS ONE 19 (8): e0304342. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0304342.
Schulman, Jonathan, James N Druckman, Alauna Safarpour, Matthew A Baum, Katherine Ognyanova, Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Alexi Quintana Mathé, et al. n.d. “Continuity and Change in Trust in Scientists in the United States: Demographic Stability and Partisan Polarization.” Public Opinion Quarterly, nfaf059. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfaf059.
Torreblanca, Carolina, William Dinneen, Guy Grossman, and Yiqing Xu. 2025. “The Credibility Revolution in Political Science.” OSF Preprints. 2025. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/w2kmc_v1.
Van de Werfhorst, Herman. 2020. “Are Universities Left-Wing Bastions? The Political Orientation of Professors, Professionals, and Managers in Europe.” The British Journal of Sociology 71 (1): 47–73.