Public trust in science is often framed through competing approaches. Deficit-oriented models emphasize the role of scientific knowledge in shaping trust, while constructivist perspectives highlight the coexistence of multiple epistemologies and how alternative knowledge systems can persist alongside scientific outlooks. The authors argue that both traditions insufficiently address the mechanisms that connect scientific knowledge, alternative epistemic orientations, and mistrust in science. To fill this gap, the study reframes knowledge not as an invariably protective resource but as a potentially conditional epistemic resource whose effects depend on intervening psychological processes and contextual factors.
The analysis uses cross-national survey data from Europe collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. To capture relationships at multiple levels, the authors apply a multilevel structural equation model within a multidimensional framework. This approach enables simultaneous examination of individual-level and regional-level pathways linking knowledge, mediating cognitive processes, and mistrust. The model also permits testing of moderation by individual traits and macro-level contextual variables.
Central to the paper is the proposition that conspiratorial reasoning operates as a key mechanism through which scientific knowledge influences mistrust in science. Rather than viewing knowledge and conspiracy beliefs as simply inversely related, the framework tests whether conspiratorial reasoning transmits or transforms the impact of scientific knowledge on mistrust at both the individual and regional levels. The focus on conspiratorial reasoning foregrounds how interpretive predispositions can reframe factual information and thereby shape trust outcomes.
The study examines how the pathway from scientific knowledge to mistrust via conspiratorial reasoning is conditioned by individual characteristics. Specifically, cognitive dispositions, motivational orientations, and ideological traits are included as moderators. These factors determine how people engage with information, whether they are inclined to endorse alternative epistemic frames, and how receptive they are to conspiracy explanations. Informational engagement is highlighted as an influential moderator: people more actively engaged with information environments may show different mediational patterns compared with less engaged individuals.
In addition to individual-level moderators, macro-level contexts are considered. Regional political climates, cultural value orientations, and economic conditions are tested as potential moderators of the mediated pathway. The authors report that features of the regional environment — for example, prevailing value climates and levels of religiosity — condition the strength of the relationships between knowledge, conspiratorial reasoning, and mistrust. This multilevel perspective emphasizes that local contexts shape how epistemic resources function in practice.
The analysis finds that conspiratorial reasoning significantly mediates the relationship between scientific knowledge and mistrust in science at both individual and regional levels. In other words, conspiratorial interpretation of events and information is an important channel through which knowledge relates to trust outcomes. The magnitude and direction of these mediated associations are not uniform: they are contingent on moderators such as informational engagement, regional value climates, and religiosity. Consequently, higher scientific knowledge does not automatically translate into lower mistrust; its protective effect depends on concurrent cognitive, motivational, ideological, and contextual conditions.
These findings suggest reframing interventions and communication strategies that assume a simple deficit model. Because scientific knowledge operates as a conditional epistemic resource, efforts to increase knowledge alone may be insufficient to reduce mistrust where conspiratorial reasoning is prevalent or where contextual factors reinforce alternative epistemic frames. Policy and practice should therefore consider psychological predispositions (for example, conspiratorial tendencies and informational engagement) and the broader socio-cultural environment (including religiosity and regional value climates) when designing public engagement and risk-communication strategies.
The abstract and source provided outline the study design, modeling approach, and principal conclusions but do not report specific sample sizes, measurement items, statistical estimates, or exact operationalization of variables. Likewise, exact details about the timing and scope of the European cross-national survey, the measurement of conspiratorial reasoning, and the precise list of regional-level indicators are not available in the source text supplied. Those details would need to be retrieved from the full article.
Using a multilevel structural equation model on European COVID-19 survey data, the authors identify conspiratorial reasoning as a robust mediating mechanism linking scientific knowledge to mistrust in science. The mediated pathway operates at multiple levels and is conditioned by individual and contextual moderators such as informational engagement, regional value climates, and religiosity. The study underscores that scientific knowledge may function as a conditional, not uniformly protective, resource in public understanding of science.