ABSTRACT
Recent national surveys in Mexico show an in-crease in acceptance of pseudo-scientific beliefs and practices, as well as a negative public perception of the social visibility of scientists. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a post-normal context that allows us to analyse the relevance that Mexican citizens confer upon science and scientists in times of crisis. This paper presents the results of two 2020 studies on public perception of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the role of science in fighting it, done on two very different population groups in Mexico: the rural (mostly indigenous) population and the urban population. We compare the results from these studies with other national studies on public understanding of science conducted before the pandemic. In this comparison, we use the indicators Progress, Reserves, Knowledge and Engage-ment, as recently proposed by Bauer et al., as a way of ana-lysing science's so-called cultural authority. Our study indicates that in this post-normal sociosanitary situation most citizens, as a general rule, show trust in science and recognize its social legitimacy. Finally, in light of some specific results, we ar-gue that the cultural disparities prevalent in Mexico should be considered especially significant in trying to take advantage of science's current social prestige in order to improve the social appropriation of scientific culture in Mexico in general, that is, beyond specific post-normal contexts. © 2022, CSIC Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. All rights reserved.