Trust is a basic element of our social life. We need trust since we are social beings and any form of co-operative activity involves trust. There cannot be any successful business or any happy marriage, if partners do not trust each other. In addition, trust is a central and crucial value in the doctor–patient relationship. Furthermore, trust is especially important for an ethically adequate practice of science.

Public trust in science depends on scientists' behaviour as well as on the public understanding of science and acceptance of the applications of new scientific developments. Trust can be destroyed if some scientists do not follow the rules of good scientific practice and are caught in dishonesty or conflict of interest. More broadly, trust also depends on whether people trust scientists to do socially responsible science and believe that society will be able to control and maintain risks which new technologies and high-tech medicine supposedly introduce.

In many European countries polls document lack or loss of public trust in science and new technologies. There are certainly different reasons for this and it is difficult to say whether the public mistrust is a response to prior untruthfulness and abuse of trust or whether it is rather caused by an uneasiness attending rapid progress in science and technology.

Trust is especially important in the context of large-scale genetic databases as they are proposed in Iceland, Estonia, the UK and elsewhere.