Trust, Distrust, and the “Competent Outsider”: Rethinking Science Education's Responsibilities in the (Dis)Information Crisis

ABSTRACT While recent scholarship has enriched our understanding of how misinformation operates, the field of science education needs to more thoughtfully address how scientific institutions relate to broader structures of power and inequality that shape public trust. Science education must engage both the historical and current geopolitical contexts of scientific knowledge production and the ways in which science in global capitalism is subject to elite capture. I argue that science education should prepare students to develop more sophisticated analyses of relationships between science, power, and political economy, while strengthening the position and integrity of scientific institutions through coproduced community‐driven science and solidarity with the communities it serves.