IANUS endorses the conviction that trust can never be taken for granted. It must be cultivated thoughtfully, especially in a democratic context where scepticism has a legitimate place. Our conceptual work unpacked the ambiguities of trust and the legitimacy of informed distrust. We emphasized the need for researchers to engage with scepticism constructively—as a source of insight rather than a threat.
Subsequently, IANUS focused on participatory engagement with stakeholders in science, society, and policy as a co-creative process. Our findings call for a methodological and epistemic shift: embracing public values and broadening the knowledge base to include societal (practical, professional and experiential) forms of knowledge. This change carries ethical implications as well to address the challenges of participatory and engaged research.
We examined the commonly accepted assumptions about the cure-all effect of open science and citizen engagement outlining the potential risks and pitfalls. Armed with that nuanced knowledge, we created tools for researchers and citizens to engage critically with each other.
Our interdisciplinary team—including researchers from philosophy, psychology, ethics, data science, and political science—examined trust as a multifaceted and context-dependent phenomenon. We set out to analyse the dynamics of trust and distrust, to assess the current landscape of trust in science and to develop practical pathways to restore and maintain it. We surveyed the literature, conducted historical case studies, and developed a theoretical framework to distinguish warranted from unwarranted trust and distrust. We also incorporated key findings from past EU-funded projects, focusing on challenges such as research misconduct, overpromising, and industry collaborations.
These insights were refined during the empirical, participatory phase, culminating in concrete policy recommendations. Our main conclusion: restoring trust requires research to be transparent, responsive, inclusive, and sensitive to societal values. Trust is not a matter of image but of substance, while ensuring that public concerns are taken on board from the very start. This ethos of “epistemic inclusion” challenges the model of science as a closed, performance-driven knowledge industry. Instead, it advocates open science, grounded in societal relevance.
IANUS partners engaged in 75 events to promote trust-building and produced 15 peer-reviewed publications in various stages of development, all disseminated with open access. Our lessons learned, policy recommendations, toolkits and other resources are published on the IANUS website - https://trustinscience.eu/ - and ZENODO.
