Science has never required blind faith.

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Quite the opposite.

Science advances by asking difficult questions, testing uncomfortable hypotheses, challenging accepted wisdom, and enabling independent investigators to examine the evidence.

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Authority alone has never been enough.

That is why every scientific paper includes a Materials and Methods section. The goal isn’t merely to announce conclusions. It is to provide enough information for others to reproduce the work, validate the findings, or identify errors.

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That’s how science earns trust.

COVID changed that.

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Too often, Americans were simply told to “trust the science.”

Many did.

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Many no longer do.

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A recent Rasmussen Reports poll illustrates how profound that loss of confidence has become.

Nearly half of Americans now believe that COVID vaccines likely caused a significant number of unexplained deaths during the pandemic. Another Rasmussen survey found that roughly one-quarter of Americans believe someone they personally knew died because of a COVID vaccine.

Those polls prove nothing about vaccine safety.

Public opinion is not scientific evidence.

But they prove something else.

Millions of Americans no longer believe their government has been fully transparent.

That should concern every physician, scientist, and public health official alike.

As doctors, we learn early that association does not imply causation.

If a patient suffers a stroke after receiving a vaccine, it does not necessarily mean the vaccine caused the stroke.

Temporal association alone is insufficient.

But medicine teaches another lesson that seems to have been forgotten amid COVID.

Statistical anomalies require explanation.

Imagine flipping a coin.

If it lands heads ten times in a row, that’s unusual but entirely possible.

Flip it another ten times.

Still heads.

No honest scientist immediately concludes that the coin is weighted.

Neither does an honest scientist ridicule anyone who asks questions.

The proper response is simple.

Examine the coin.

Throughout the pandemic, independent researchers examined population-level mortality data, adverse-event reporting systems, insurance databases, and other public health information. Some concluded they were observing statistical patterns that warranted further investigation.

Perhaps those researchers are right.

Perhaps they are mistaken.

Perhaps confounding variables explain every apparent anomaly.

That’s precisely why open scientific inquiry is essential.

The answer to unexpected data is not dismissal.

It is an investigation.

Unfortunately, too often the response appeared to be something different.

Questions were labeled as misinformation before they were debated.

Critics were marginalized before their analyses were reviewed.

Requests for underlying government records sometimes escalated into prolonged legal battles rather than routine scientific exchanges.

If the official conclusions are correct, independent verification should strengthen them, not threaten them.

One of my fellowship mentors at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute was widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on macular diseases. He literally wrote the definitive textbook on the subject.

When faced with particularly puzzling clinical findings or diagnoses, he often replied with three simple words:

“I don’t know.”

It wasn’t an admission of ignorance. It was an expression of intellectual honesty. The more we know, the more we recognize the uncertainty that remains.

The greatest experts are often the most comfortable with acknowledging uncertainty.

Contrast that humility with the certainty many public officials projected throughout the pandemic.

Masks worked.

Perhaps they didn’t work as well as originally claimed.

The virus definitely originated in a wet market.

Then a laboratory origin became a legitimate possibility, worthy of investigation.

Vaccination would prevent transmission.

Later, the emphasis shifted to reducing severe illness and hospitalization.

Science evolves.

No reasonable physician expects anything else.

What damaged public confidence wasn’t the change in recommendations.

It was the unwillingness to acknowledge uncertainty while those recommendations were changing.

Trust works much like a marriage does.

Imagine one spouse suddenly locking a phone, deleting messages, changing passwords, and insisting there is nothing to discuss.

Perhaps there is a perfectly innocent explanation.

Perhaps there isn’t.

But secrecy itself alters the relationship.

Suspicion becomes inevitable—not because wrongdoing has been proven, but because transparency has vanished.

The government is no different.

Today, many Americans believe that something important has been hidden from them.

They may be entirely wrong.

They may be partly right.

The Rasmussen surveys cannot address that question.

But they reveal something arguably as significant.

Public trust has fractured.

The next pandemic will almost certainly occur.

When it does, public health officials will again ask Americans to accept extraordinary recommendations.

Those recommendations may be fully justified.

But they will succeed only if the institutions that make them have credibility.

Trust cannot be rebuilt through fact-checking.

It cannot be restored by censorship.

It cannot be demanded by authority.

It must be earned.

If the available evidence supports the safety of COVID vaccines, publish the data.

If statistical anomalies have reasonable explanations, provide them.

If independent researchers have made methodological errors, demonstrate them openly.

That is how science resolves disputes.

Don’t simply label those asking questions as “conspiracy theorists,” “deniers,” or “kooks.” Make it make sense rather than telling those asking questions to shut up and move along.

Sunlight remains the best disinfectant.

The Rasmussen surveys do not prove that COVID vaccines caused widespread harm.

They prove that millions of Americans no longer believe official assurances are sufficient.

That is not merely a political issue.

It is a scientific one.

And until public health institutions once again embrace transparency with the same enthusiasm they once embraced certainty, the crisis of confidence will persist long after COVID itself has faded into history.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a Colorado-based ophthalmologist who writes frequently about medicine, science, and public policy.

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