Who do YOU trust?

Trust. It's a simple little five letter word but there is so much to it both in everyday life and again on a much deeper level. Is trust believing everything you hear, everything you read? Do you need to see the evidence? Or is it a gut instinct? Maybe (if you are anything like me) it depends on the circumstances. You want to believe what people tell you, but sometimes you take that with the proverbial "grain of salt".

The reason for this discussion is the publication of the seventh annual Reader's Digest Most Trusted list. It makes interesting reading and in some respects ties into the whole concept of trust and needing to have people prove or provide evidence that they can be trusted. Because several of the most trusted people on this year's list are those that look for evidence and proof. They are the scientists and they rank as first, second and third most trusted Kiwi's in 2011.

New Zealand's most trusted man is Sir Ray Avery. You can find out more about him in his very popular biography Rebel with a Cause published in 2010. Ray Avery is an amazing person. He is the current New Zealander of the Year because of his clever work in the Third World using his scientific and business knowledge to provide cheap cataract operations, cheap and more effective incubators for babies and other creative scientific solutions. His childhood was very 'Angela's Ashes', brought up in an orphanage (his own mother had tried to sell him!), then running away and living on the streets. But Ray went on to become a scientist, a millionaire, a very successful businessman and now someone who literally does help to change the world. During the mid nineties Ray spent most of his time working in Eritrea and Nepal, setting up two world class intraocular lens laboratories. At that time the cost of an intraocular lenses was about US$300 but Ray managed to put the technology together to produce lenses for under US$10.00, making modern cataract surgery accessible to the poor throughout Africa and Asia.Today these laboratories produce over 10% of the world's supply of intraocular lenses. Today he encourages other talented people to get on board and tackle some of the really big problems confronting the poor in developing countries. From his garage in Mt Eden Auckland Ray manages a global network of experts to work on specific projects and somehow everyone finds themselves donating their time and knowledge for free and they are rewarded by making a difference" --Publisher description.

Number 2 on the list is Sir Peter Gluckman, the Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister. He is the author or co-author of several books held by Auckland Libraries including Mismatch - Why our lives no longer fit our bodies. He has also recently produced, at the request of the Prime Minister, a comprehensive piece of research into youth and looking at factors affecting the high rate of suicide amongst Kiwi teenagers and possible ways to prevent this.

Making it a trifecta for the scientists is number 3 on the list, current New Zealander of the Year, Sir Paul Callaghan. He is a physicist who is also author and editor of several titles on our shelves. Amongst the most intriguing is As far as we know : conversations about science, life and the universe As Far As We Know answers some of the oldest and most perplexing questions that have been posed about science - from what existed before the Big Bang to the rise of Homo sapiens. In their discussions, Kim Hill and Paul Callaghan consider some of the most momentous concepts of our time and in the process make science understandable, and, above all, entertaining and interesting. Reading this may go some way to also answering the question as to why we are ranking scientists so highly in the trustworthy stakes.

There are a fair smattering of entertainers, sportspeople, heroes and celebrities in the list. Politicians don't fare so well this year. The full list of the Top 100 people is on the Reader's Digest website (which contains lots of other interesting information). If you want to do your own research into whether you think the list is right (or wrong) then check out the biography section at your local library or one of our digital resources.