Lack of trust in science is often treated as a problem of perception. In fragile democracies, however, it reflects deeper struggles over who controls knowledge, who is allowed to produce it, and whose voices are silenced.
In such contexts, the fate of science cannot be separated from the fate of democratic institutions. The erosion of scientific credibility and the weakening of governance are not parallel processes, but mutually reinforcing ones. As political systems become less accountable, scientific institutions lose independence; as science is distorted or suppressed, the capacity for evidence-based accountability collapses.
Public debate often treats declining confidence in science as a technical problem, one that can be addressed through better communication, improved data, or more effective responses to misinformation. This view, however, overlooks a more fundamental issue. Confidence in knowledge depends not only on the quality of evidence, but on the integrity and independence of the institutions that produce and govern it. When those institutions are compromised, the authority of science itself is called into question.
Safeguarding scientific integrity is not only a matter of professional ethics but also a central component of democratic resilience.
This dynamic operates as a feedback loop. As governance deteriorates, science is politicized, constrained, or instrumentalized; as scientific integrity erodes, democratic accountability weakens further. In such environments, the question is no longer whether science is trusted, but whether it can function at all.
Nicaragua offers a stark illustration of this process. Over the past decade, the deterioration of democratic institutions has been accompanied by systematic efforts to control information, marginalize independent expertise, and suppress scientific voices. These pressures are not only imposed from above; they are also sustained from within, as scientists and academic institutions make everyday accommodations to navigate political constraints.
As a scientist at the University of Central America in Managua, I have observed over the past decade how the erosion of democratic institutions has been accompanied by systematic efforts to control information, marginalize independent expertise, and suppress scientific voices. Such marginalization is not abstract; it becomes visible when scientists who engage critically with public policy are excluded, silenced, or forced out of their institutions.
In my own case, after returning from an international scientific meeting, I was denied re-entry into my country and my laboratory was shut down. This experience reflects a broader pattern in which those willing to speak openly and challenge political authority are often targeted. Remaining silent, however, is not a viable option.
Safeguarding scientific integrity is not only a matter of professional ethics but also a central component of democratic resilience.
Nicaragua: Crisis, Silence, and Scientific Constraint
During the COVID-19 pandemic, while most countries in the region adopted evidence-based public health measures, Nicaragua followed a markedly different path. The government encouraged public events, including the widely publicized Love in Times of COVID-19 march, while strictly limiting testing and reporting.
Independent scientists and medical professionals raised concerns, yet these voices were ignored or actively suppressed. Official narratives consistently downplayed the severity of the crisis.
The consequences were profound. The absence of reliable data created deep uncertainty about the scale of the pandemic. At the same time, the dismissal of scientific advice eroded public confidence in health responses, leaving a vacuum that confusion and rumor moved quickly to fill.
In cases where international researchers engage with data and ignore politics, scientific practice can inadvertently reinforce existing power asymmetries and lend credibility to incomplete narratives.
Yet the erosion of trust was not only imposed from above. Subtle dynamics also emerged within the scientific community itself, where reports from scientists aligned with or subordinated to those in power avoided addressing the political context of the crisis. These analyses often remained narrowly technical, reflecting a form of strategic accommodation that might be called “astute silence.” Such framing contributed collectively to a partial and distorted representation of reality.
A similar pattern appeared among some international collaborators. In certain cases, foreign researchers engaged in data collection and publication without fully confronting the governance failures shaping the crisis. This dynamic exemplifies what scholars have called “parachute science,” a practice in which researchers from wealthier countries conduct work in developing regions, extract data, and publish results without meaningful engagement with local scientists or serious grappling with local political realities.
In cases where international researchers engage with data and ignore politics, scientific practice can inadvertently reinforce existing power asymmetries and lend credibility to incomplete narratives.
Internal Fractures and the Interoceanic Canal Project
A similar dynamic emerged in debates surrounding the proposed interoceanic canal project. Presented as a transformative development initiative, the project raised serious environmental concerns, particularly regarding its potential impact on Lake Cocibolca.
The Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences assumed the role of independent scientific watchdog, promoting rigorous assessments of risks to biodiversity, water resources, and local communities, and leading international efforts to demand transparency and evaluate the project’s feasibility. These efforts were ultimately constrained by a decision-making process that excluded meaningful public consultation and operated without transparency.
Internal fracture is not incidental to the erosion of trust; it is one of its primary mechanisms.
The canal debate also exposed internal fractures within the scientific community. While many researchers raised critical concerns, a few saw opportunities for funding and field access, leading in some cases to alignment with official narratives.
A particularly telling example of this divide was the argument advanced by certain actors that ongoing deforestation trends made environmental degradation inevitable, and that proceeding with the canal in exchange for economic benefits was therefore justified. This reasoning did not suppress scientific evidence outright. It selectively mobilized it to legitimize a predetermined political decision.
This distinction of where scientists aligned with political narratives matters. Science can be instrumentalized without being silenced, co-opted rather than suppressed, bent rather than broken. When this occurs, scientific credibility erodes from within, and public skepticism about whose interests science ultimately serves becomes difficult to refute.
Internal fracture is not incidental to the erosion of trust; it is one of its primary mechanisms.
How Routine Decisions Redraw the Boundaries of Knowledge
The canal debate illustrates a broader pattern that extends across Nicaragua’s scientific landscape. The erosion of trust in science is in some cases accelerated by actors within academic and bureaucratic systems who implement, normalize, or actively facilitate these dynamics. In Nicaragua, segments of university leadership and higher education governance structures, operating under political pressure and responding to institutional incentives, played an active role in consolidating control over academic life.
What may appear as routine administrative decisions such as curricular oversight, hiring processes, and institutional restructuring can function as mechanisms of political discipline. By controlling appointments, redirecting research agendas, and marginalizing dissenting voices within institutions, university administrators can redraw the boundaries of permissible knowledge without the need for overt repression.
When scientific independence is subordinated to political or career incentives, the consequences reach beyond individual careers or institutions.
Accommodation, in this sense, is not merely passive compliance. Rather, it is a form of co-production of the conditions that make repression possible.
When scientific independence is subordinated to political or career incentives, the consequences reach beyond individual careers or institutions. The norms of transparency, peer accountability, and institutional autonomy that sustain credible knowledge production are gradually hollowed out, leaving behind structures that bear the appearance of scientific institutions while no longer performing their essential democratic function.
What follows is not only a loss of knowledge, but a loss of the conditions under which trustworthy knowledge becomes possible at all.
Attacks on Academic Freedom Dismantle Institutions
In Nicaragua, erosion of institutions led to the elimination of the institutional foundations that sustain independent scientific inquiry altogether.
Following the 2018 sociopolitical crisis, universities and research centers became targets of state intervention. Independent institutions were portrayed as political actors, their autonomy progressively curtailed, and eventually subjected to outright repression. Universities were closed, their legal status revoked, and their assets confiscated.
The censorship of academic institutions is vital to my own story as a longtime professor and administrator at the University of Central America, UCA, a Jesuit institution long committed to independent inquiry and public engagement. During the 2018 crisis it opened its doors to shelter protesters and provide medical assistance to those fleeing violence. I saw firsthand how dedicated the faculty were not only to science but also to humanitarianism.
Yet the government frequently targeted UCA, which illustrates the extent to which authoritarian regimes perceive autonomous academic spaces not as educational institutions but as political threats.
Attacks on academic freedom did not just constrain independent knowledge; they completely dismantled the scientific institutions producing it.
I also was part of the founding of the Academy of Sciences of Nicaragua, whose legal status the government revoked a year before cancelling the UCA. The closure of such a prestigious and impactful organization for scientists represented a further and direct attack on independent scientific authority, eliminating precisely the institution that had most visibly resisted the instrumentalization of knowledge in the canal debate.
The consequences of this censorship extend well beyond individual institutions. By forcing scientists and students into exile, weakening research capacity, and disrupting international collaborations, these actions have dismantled the very ecosystem that produces independent knowledge and sustains democratic accountability.
The scale of this dismantling warrants emphasis. Since the 2018 sociopolitical crisis, state censorship and restrictions on independent monitoring have made precise figures difficult to establish, yet it is clear that hundreds of students, professors, and researchers have faced dismissal, persecution, or exile for their perceived political positions.
Attacks on academic freedom did not just constrain independent knowledge; they completely dismantled the scientific institutions producing it.
Resilience, Courage, and the Limits of Resistance
What emerges from Nicaragua’s recent history is not only a story of decline. Despite the pressures described above, scientific resistance has persisted, and its persistence is itself analytically significant.
The Academy of Sciences played a critical role in raising concerns about the canal project and advocating for transparency at considerable institutional risk. During the COVID-19 crisis, independent scientists formed informal networks to gather epidemiological data and communicate risk to the public, operating outside official channels precisely because official channels had been closed to them. Universities such as UCA maintained spaces for critical thought and civic engagement long after the political costs of doing so had become severe.
What sustains resistance under these conditions? Partly professional obligation, partly moral commitment, and partly the informal solidarities that develop among scientists who recognize what is being lost.
Confronting parachute science, and the power asymmetries it can reinforce, is part of this agenda.
Diaspora networks and international academic partnerships have also played a meaningful role, providing platforms, protection, and visibility for work that cannot safely be published or presented at home.
Yet, such resistance is structurally precarious. Operating in the margins rather than the center of knowledge production relies on individuals bearing personal costs without institutional protection. It cannot substitute for the dismantled ecosystem of trust, independence, and accountability. Instead, resilience here serves only to measure how much has already been lost.
Nicaragua may represent one of the most extreme examples, but similar tensions between political power, academic freedom, and scientific autonomy have emerged elsewhere in Latin America, including Venezuela and Brazil, suggesting that the challenges described here are part of a broader regional and global concern.
Protecting Science Amid Political Constraints
The most distinctive priority emerging from this analysis concerns the scientific community.
Professional bodies, journals, and funding agencies must develop explicit norms and accountability mechanisms that address these dynamics directly: standards for engagement with politically constrained contexts, transparency requirements for international collaborations, and meaningful protections for scientists who resist institutional pressure.
Confronting parachute science, and the power asymmetries it can reinforce, is part of this agenda.
Beyond the scientific community’s internal responsibilities, international bodies and academic networks must strengthen diplomatic pressure on governments that suppress academic freedom, moving from periodic condemnation to sustained and coordinated engagement.
Organizations that support at-risk scholars need expanded mandates and resources, including emergency placements, fellowships, and legal protection for scientists facing persecution or exile. Regional collaborations must be formalized and made durable, standing mechanisms capable of responding before institutional damage becomes irreversible are far more effective than ad hoc solidarity after the fact.
Wherever democratic institutions are under strain, the conditions that make trustworthy science possible are also at risk. Recognizing this connection is the first step toward defending both.
Finally, a sustained global effort is needed to document how political crises affect scientific systems. Such evidence can guide policy, inform donor priorities, support displaced academic communities, and build the evidentiary base that makes early intervention possible. What cannot be measured cannot be defended.
Rebuilding trust in such contexts requires restoring the conditions under which science can operate independently, protecting academic autonomy, holding accountable those who instrumentalize or suppress knowledge, and building the international solidarity mechanisms that can sustain scientific integrity when national institutions have failed. These are not technical challenges. They are political ones, and they demand political will.
When governments manipulate or suppress scientific information, they undermine not only specific findings but also the broader ecosystem within which science informs public life — eroding the capacity of societies to respond to shared challenges, from public health crises to climate change.
Wherever democratic institutions are under strain, the conditions that make trustworthy science possible are also at risk. Recognizing this connection is the first step toward defending both. Safeguarding science is not only about preserving knowledge, but also about sustaining the possibility of informed, accountable, and democratic societies.
