Contemporary public policies deal with complex issues requiring high levels of specialized knowledge that most citizens do not possess. When such issues are the subject of public debate, people may rely on experts to form their opinions. This is because scientists are deemed —at least from a socially normative perspective— competent, professional, objective, well-intentioned, ethical, and driven by the general interest (Resnik, 2011). In this context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study of the link between populist attitudes and trust in science and scientists gained popularity among trust scholars, particularly in socio-economically and institutionally well-developed Western countries. Populist attitudes have been found to generally be negatively associated with trust in science and scientific expertise. For instance, researchers in the United States and Europe have linked populist attitudes to mistrust of science and the scientific community, beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracies (Eberl et al., 2020), climate change skepticism, and positions on environmental protection (Huber, 2020; Yan et al., 2021), and people posture on climate change mitigation policies (Huber et al., 2020). Yet, it is unclear what the relationship between populism and trust in scientists is in states with poorly performing institutions. Our research project —awarded a grant from the Major Research Funds of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar—aims to contribute to filling this gap. We hypothesized that in societies where institutions generally perform poorly, scientists are not perceived to be linked to elite networks, and the work produced by scientists is not perceived to be tied to the policy positions espoused by the government. As such, populists hold more favorable views of the scientific community in such contexts. This hypothesis is tested using a novel, nationally representative survey experiment (1400 adult respondents) in Lebanon to measure the relationship between populist attitudes and trust in science and scientists. We integrate a survey experiment that explores whether linking scientists to elites in Lebanon moderates the effects of populism on trust in scientists. Our paper will present the result of our study that provides better insights into the individual-level determinants of trust in science and scientific expertise but also highlights the importance of considering what contextually makes up the elites when assessing the impact of populist attitudes on several attitudes and behaviors.