The More They Said 'Trust Us,' the Less America Did

Public confidence collapsed not because Americans asked too many questions, but because too many went unanswered.

Brian C. Joondeph | July 27, 2026

Science has never required blind faith.

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

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.

That’s how science earns trust.

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

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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........

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