According to a survey conducted by Reader鈥檚 Digest magazine, the most-trusted person in America is the actor Tom Hanks. Second most-trusted? Another Hollywood star, Sandra Bullock.
Of course, Hanks stormed a D-Day beach and rescued Private Ryan, didn鈥檛 he? But the most trusted man in America?
The co-founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, came seventh, and a Nobel-prize winning chemist showed up in 11th place. Not a single politician currently in office appeared among the top 50.
Actors, celebrities and sports stars command respect in the U.S. The people actually running the country do not.
Of course, leeriness about government is part of America鈥檚 DNA. But this declining trust in authority is not confined to the U.S. Healthy numbers of Canadians share similar suspicions.
Scientists insist that fluoridation of drinking water is safe and beneficial. But try selling that in sa国际传媒
Only 11 per cent of communities in the province have accepted fluoridation, despite pleas from dental-health experts.
The residents of Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay and Esquimalt all voted against the idea when a referendum was held in 1959. Feelings ran high enough then that the issue has stayed buried ever since.
Immunization unquestionably saves lives. Yet here, too, many are unconvinced.
Last year, one of the worst outbreaks of whooping cough in recent memory swept across sa国际传媒. The main weight of the disease fell on sa国际传媒鈥檚 Fraser Valley, southwest Alberta and parts of New Brunswick. These are all regions where parent groups oppose vaccination.
sa国际传媒 Hydro鈥檚 new smart meters have provoked a storm of outrage, and a class-action lawsuit is underway. Critics say the meters, which use wireless technology to communicate with sa国际传媒 Hydro鈥檚 head office, are a threat to public safety.
Along the same lines, concerns have been raised about cellphones, Wi-Fi and a host of other high-tech gadgets. All are perfectly safe, according to the experts. Yet some unbelievers have compared wearing a Bluetooth headset to strapping a microwave oven to your head.
That most of these fears are unfounded is beside the point. They are real, they affect our behaviour and they have consequences. A one-month-old baby girl died in the whooping-cough outbreak.
Moreover, efforts to change opinion with public-education programs, by and large, don鈥檛 work. The problem, it seems, isn鈥檛 lack of information: The problem is lack of trust.
Authorities we once relied upon 鈥� science, government, expert opinion 鈥� have lost some of their standing.
Part of it may be due to overexposure. On almost a daily basis, it seems, public-health officials issue alarm-filled bulletins about some aspect of our lives. Eventually, we tune out the warnings, even when the danger is potentially mortal, like failing to get a child immunized.
Part of it is caused by plain dud science. In 1998, a study in Britain alleged that vaccination was somehow connected to childhood autism.
The study was later denounced as a deliberate fraud, and the lead author lost his licence to practise medicine. Yet millions of parents were caught up in the panic and vaccination rates fell for some years.
And some of our politicians hardly invite trust.
Can anything be done? It鈥檚 certainly an irony that as science and technology expand, our confidence in authority diminishes.
But perhaps that is the problem. It鈥檚 been said the last man who knew everything was the renaissance genius Isaac Newton, and he died in 1727.
Maybe there is simply too much we should know and not enough hours in the day to catch up.
Whatever the reason, staying on top of everything that鈥檚 going on has become a full-time job. And it鈥檚 hard to see it getting any easier.
