People used to respect Science, as an abstract mysterious force which Scientists could augur and even use to invoke the odd miracle. In a way, people in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw Scientists in a similar way to how pre-Christian Europe saw priests; you need one on hand when you make a decision, and contradict them at your peril, but ultimately they're advisers rather than leaders.

That attitude is mostly gone now,

Is this true? It pattern matches to a generic things-were-better-in-the-old-days complaint and I'm not sure how one would get a systematic idea of how much people trusted science & scientists 100-200 years ago.

(Looking at the US, for instance, I only find results from surveys going back to the late 1950s. Americans' confidence in science seems to have fallen quite a lot between 1958 and 1971-2, probably mostly in the late 1960s, then rebounded somewhat before remaining stable for the last 35-40 years. I note that the loss of trust in science that happened in the 1960s wasn't science-specific, but part of a general loss of confidence experienced by almost all institutions people were polled about.)

but it could be useful to bring it back. Ordinary people are not going to provide useful scientific insights or otherwise helpfully (1) participate in the process, so keeping them out of the way and deferential is going to be more valuable then trying to involve them.

Citizen science seems like evidence against this idea.