Countries Least Trusting of Science: Where Does Indonesia Rank?
Jakarta – Public trust in science and scientists has continued to decline since the Covid-19 pandemic, a study has found.
The Wellcome Global Monitor 2026 report says that only 72% of people worldwide said they trusted science in 2025, down from 80% in 2020. The figure was also lower than in the first survey in 2018, when 77% of respondents said they trusted science.
Conversely, the proportion of people with little or no trust in science has risen. In 2025, 19% of respondents said they did not trust science very much or did not trust it at all, up from 13% in both 2018 and 2020.
The 2026 Wellcome Global Monitor survey was conducted in 2025 as part of the Gallup World Poll, involving more than 140,000 respondents across 140 countries.
The survey used nationally representative samples gathered through in-person, telephone and online interviews. Its analysis combined socio-economic indicators, including education, income, employment, wellbeing and inequality, to examine factors associated with public trust in science.
Trust in science
The report does not explicitly list the countries with the least trust in science. However, based on its ranking of countries with high trust in science, these were at the bottom:
Togo (5.8%)
North Macedonia (8.2%)
Somalia (9.1%)
Georgia (9.1%)
Pakistan (9.3%)
Jamaica (10.2%)
Moldova (10.4%)
Albania (10.8%)
Mauritius (11.7%)
The Gambia (12.2%)
Spain ranked first, with 67.9% of respondents saying they trusted science a great deal, followed by Finland at 65.9%.
The next two places went to Central Asian countries Uzbekistan (63.8%) and Tajikistan (60.7%). Both ranked ahead of several countries with more advanced research and technology industries, including the United States, the United Kingdom and France.
The US ranked 13th, at 52.5%, while the UK came 14th with 51.2% and France 16th with 50.2%.
So where did Indonesia rank?
Indonesia placed 89th out of 140 countries, well below several neighbours: the Philippines (37.6%), Singapore (32%) and Vietnam (31.7%).
It nevertheless ranked ahead of Malaysia (18.7%), Cambodia (18.4%) and Thailand (13.2%).
These figures measure only the share of respondents who said they trusted science a great deal, not everyone who expressed some degree of trust in scientific knowledge.
Countries with advanced education and innovation systems were prominent near the top of the ranking. Finland, Germany and Sweden, for example, were all among the top 10 countries for high trust in science.
The findings also revealed a different pattern: Uzbekistan and Tajikistan outperformed several developed countries despite differing levels of economic development and research capacity.
This suggests that economic and educational progress alone cannot explain differences in public trust in science. Wellcome researchers said they found no strong evidence of a consistent relationship between trust in science and scientific literacy.