TRUST TO SOCIAL SCIENCE IN RUSSIA AS A RESEARCH PROBLEM

It is widely recognized that trust is a fundamental basis of social relations and a factor of social solidarity. The loss of trust to the science is an alarming worldwide trend. This article analyzes the phenomena of trust to social sciences in Russian society. Structurally the article consists of three parts. The first one refers to different contexts of weakening of trust to science. The authors consider the impact of globalization, status of social scientists and transformations within the very institution of science on trust to social science in Russian society. The second part frames the methodology of sociological studying of trust to social science. The authors describe specific characteristics of different types of trust to social knowledge. For the tasks of empirical survey, the trust to social science is defined as an emotional, cognitive and behavioral reaction of people to the production of social knowledge. As empirical objects, the professors of universities, authorities, business, journalists, and students of the universities are allocated. The first empirical results are presented in the third part. The data of poll of 100 university scientists (November-December, 2016) and 400 students of Moscow and regional Russian universities studying the social disciplines (May-June, 2017) are interpreted. The main results reveal some of the trends referred to weakening the trust to social science in Russia. The authors conclude that for the strengthening of trust to social science it is necessary to raise the authority of researchers, to do PR of scientific results, and to improve their reliability.