Covid-19 pandemic has increased trust in genetics

A survey of over 2,000 British adults, conducted in part by a UCL researcher, finds that trust in genetics is high, and went up significantly during the pandemic. The survey findings feature in a report published online by the Genetics Society and have also fed into a peer-reviewed research paper, published in PLOS Biology , which reports that people with more extreme attitudes towards science have the most self-confidence in their understanding of science. Given the increased public profile of science since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, including the introduction of PCR testing and vaccine development into the public consciousness, researchers from the Universities of Bath, Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, and Aberdeen wanted to find out what the public felt about genetics and whether this new exposure of the science has made a difference. With funding from the Genetics Society, they commissioned a survey of over 2,000 randomly selected British adults through public polling company Kantar Public. The researchers found that as a baseline most people were trusting of genetic technologies before the pandemic, based on the results of previous surveys and from asking people to think back to their attitudes pre-pandemic. Nearly half (45%) reported they trusted genetics to work for the societal good. 37% were neutral on this question, while 18% said they did not, and only very few (1-2%) were strongly distrusting.