Science Denial as the Breakdown of Epistemic Trust: A Kantian Perspective

Science denial has become so widespread in contemporary societies that it can no longer be dismissed as mere inattentiveness, irrationality, or a pathological deviation. Recent studies (e.g. Contessa 2025; McIntyre 2021) suggest that it cannot be adequately explained as a simple case of misinformation, and that a pathological interpretation falls short of accounting for its internal coherence and persistence over time. Rather, science denial is better understood as a post-trust phenomenon. It expresses a deep erosion of trust in the institutions, authorities, and epistemic norms that regulate knowledge and truth-checking procedures. This paper argues that Kant offers underexplored conceptual resources for understanding science denial as a breakdown of trust in science itself, grounded in natural epistemic dispositions. Recent literature, most notably Schmid and Betsch (2019), identifies five recurring strategies in science denial: (1) imposing impossible standards on science, (2) cherry-picking evidence, (3) committing logical fallacies, (4) reliance on fake experts, and (5) promoting conspiracy theories. I argue that Kant’s account of prejudice in his logic lectures allows these strategies to be reconstructed within a unified psychological framework, with particular emphasis on the underlying cause of the first strategy. For Kant, this strategy arises from a prejudice of excessive trust in science, grounded in a natural and necessary disposition, formed from childhood onward, to imitate and rely uncritically on epistemic authorities. In adulthood, this disposition can generate unrealistic expectations of certainty and infallibility from science, conceived as an ultimate authority of truth. For Kant, cherry-picking evidence counts as a form of logical error, and he devotes considerable attention in his logic lectures to classifying the fallacies through which scholars may mislead the unlearned. Crucially, however, Kant’s point is that such deceptions are not required for mistrust to arise. Rather, driven by our desire for knowledge and our reliance on authority, we ourselves impose impossible demands on science. Since science is often perceived as erring, revising its claims, or revealing its limitations, disappointment ensues. One response is the idealization of common sense, expressed in reliance on fake experts who promise certainty through unscientific means. Another response is not conspiracy reasoning in its strict sense, but a closely related stance, namely skepticism and even misology, as hatred of reason. As Kant puts it, misology “befalls even the most rational” when one “demands from reason more than it can deliver” (Refl. 2570, 16:424). Rather than dismissing science denial as irrational or pathological, a Kantian approach thus interprets it as an intelligible breakdown of trust in science itself. While insufficient on its own—since factors such as identity, ideology, and political polarization must also be taken into account—this framework illuminates how all five strategies of science denial can emerge from dynamics of trust and disappointment internal to epistemic life.