The confidence people place in science is frequently based not on what it really is, but on what people would like it to be. When I asked my students how they would define science, many of them replied that it's an objective way of discovering certainties about the world. But science cannot provide certainties.

Actually, doubt and science often go hand in hand. Science, when properly functioning, questions accepted understandings and brings both new knowledge and new questions — not certainty. Doubt does not create trust, nor does it help public understanding. So why should people trust a process that seems to require a troublesome state of uncertainty without always providing solid solutions?

As a historian of science, I would argue that it's the responsibility of scientists and historians of science to show that the real power of science lies precisely in what is often regarded as its weakness: its drive to question and challenge accepted understandings. Indeed, the scientific approach requires changing our understanding of the natural world whenever new evidence arises from either experimentation or observation. Scientific findings are temporary understandings that involve the state of knowledge at a given moment. In the long run, many of them are challenged and even overturned. Doubt might be troubling, but it pushes us towards a better understanding. Certainties, reassuring as they may seem, prevent the scientific process.

Scientists understand this, but in the dynamic between the public and science, there are two opposite misconceptions(误解). The first is a form of blind scientism — a belief that science is unquestionable and has the capacity to solve all problems. Such an idealized representation actually ignores the universal existence of controversy, conflict and error at the very heart of the scientific world.