As an important form of trust,peer trust in the scientific community plays an irreplaceable role in fostering the healthy, stable, and orderly development of scientific endeavors. However, existing research has paid limited attention to this issue. Drawing on a stratification perspective on the scientific community, this paper integrates existing studies to divide the academic status structure into micro-level individual status and meso-level organizational status. Using large-scale survey data from Chinese researchers, it examines academic-status differentiation in peer trust. The study finds that peer trust exhibits significant academic status differentiation, but these effects display notable heterogeneity. Scientists with higher academic reputation and greater academic power are more trusting of their domestic peers, while scientists affiliated with higher-tier universities are less trusting of domestic peers. The empirical findings of this paper, on the one hand, suggest that when examining the relationship between structure and trust, it is crucial to move beyond the limitations of individual attributes and to delve deeper into the relationship between organizational status and individual trust. On the other hand, these findings prompt a reevaluation of the differentiation of trust along status structures, thereby enriching our understanding of the relationship between status structures and trust.