Science isn’t built on certainty. It’s built on not knowing. That was one of the ideas Donna Strickland came back to in her talk at uOttawa on rebuilding public trust in science. Not knowing isn’t a flaw in the system — it’s the starting point.
There’s a tendency to talk about innovation as if it should arrive on cue. New tech, faster. Breakthroughs, now. But according to Strickland, that expectation skips over what makes those things possible: fundamental science.
This slow, uncertain work doesn’t always have a clear application at the start. It builds the knowledge everything else depends on. Strickland made the point plainly: you don’t get transformative technologies without it.
Other countries treat fundamental science as an opportunity and invest accordingly. In Canada, there’s still room to fully capture that potential, she said.
Strickland also stressed something that’s harder to solve: facts aren’t always what changes someone’s mind.
When beliefs are shaped by gut feelings, by community and by powerful personal stories, facts can feel distant or even irrelevant. Anti-vaccine spaces are a clear example. The data is there, but it’s competing with people sharing emotional lived experiences, with conviction and trust behind them.
So the issue isn’t just misinformation, she said. It’s that science is often communicated in a way that assumes facts will land on their own. They won’t.
Strickland also saw a mismatch in expectations. When scientists talk about timelines or emerging fields, they’re thinking in terms of uncertainty and probability.
But to the public, this can sound like a promise. And when things shift, as they should, it can feel like a broken promise.
Add to that a broader discomfort with uncertainty, and it’s not surprising that trust can erode.
This problem isn’t easy to fix, said Strickland. Changing gut reactions and building comfort with uncertainty are long-term projects, and they lean as much on social science as on science itself.
In her view, this work starts early. We must reward questions, not answers. Curiosity is what science runs on, not certainty. And that’s how we should teach the next generations.
And maybe, she added, part of the solution is being more honest about what science is. It’s slow. It changes. It gets things wrong along the way. It depends on patience, something that sits uneasily at a time when answers are expected instantly and technology feels like it should keep accelerating.
But there’s something encouraging in that, too.
If trust has been strained, it can also be rebuilt — not just with better facts, but with people and with conversations. With honest questions and transparent answers. With a clearer picture of how science actually works and why it takes the time it does.
Because in Strickland’s eyes, the same process that makes science messy is also what makes it work.
