A trust to social sciences: the students' look

The article deals with the problem of trust to social sciences in Russia. The paper consists of three parts. In the first one, the authors discuss the theoretical aspects of the sociological study of trust to the social sciences. The authors note the declining of trust to social knowledge in the last decades both in Russia, and in the whole world. Based on the P. Sztompka theory of trust to science, we analyze the universal reasons and specific Russian factors of weakening of trust to social knowledge and describe its consequences. Special attention is paid to the university students as a target group of social knowledge consumers and as the main actor of new generation of social scientists reproduction. In the second part, the methodology of empirical research of trust to social sciences among university students is described. The aim of the empirical research is to investigate the level of trust among the students through their perception of social science and their attitude to the science as a possible future profession. We present the system of predictors for the empirical research of the trust level. In the third part, the data of poll of 400 students of Moscow and regional universities studying the social disciplines are interpreted. The following important issues concerning students' attitude to this subject are considered: students' perception of social sciences; comparison of level of trust to social knowledge created by the Russian and western scientists; students' interest to social sciences; factors of increase of trust to social sciences. The findings of the study show contradiction of the "image" of social sciences created in consciousness of students. On the one hand, they have the belief in "the science force". On the other hand, students reveal vulnerability of social science in a situation of dynamically changing realities that is seen in the fast obsolescence of social knowledge. Perception of the development of social knowledge in Russia is also ambiguous. According to the survey data, students don't differentiate the western and Russian social science regarding the trust to the science. More than 60% of the interviewed students consider that they can trust to majority of the scientific results made by both the Russian, and western social scientists. Though we have rather high level of trust to scientific knowledge, the students' interest in science is low. The results of empirical estimation of factors of trust increase confirm that the closure of scientific findings and lack of institutional channels of distribution of social knowledge and results of researches to the general population lead to the decrease of public interest in social sciences. On the contrary, the "openness" of social sciences and the raising the social prestige of scientists are the significant conditions of engaging youth in science.

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