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In today’s polarized political climate, researchers who combat mistruths have come under attack and been labelled as unelected arbiters of truth. But the fight against misinformation is valid, warranted and urgently required.

The article discusses how African origin of the virus like AIDS, an explanation favored by Western scientists that has since been unambiguously established. It mentions conspiracy theories impacted by anxiety over China's increasing prominence on the world stage or in preexisting hostility to biotechnology and fear over biosecurity.

When scientists discover a distant planet that is made of diamonds (Bailes et al. 2011), public admiration is virtually assured. When the same scientific method yields findings that impinge on [...]

Every major scientific body in the world, from the UK's Royal Society to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, endorses the view that greenhouse gas emissions from human [...]

Any strategy to mitigate climate change will have economic and political implications that are incompatible with libertarian ideals of free markets. These political implications have created an environment of rhetorical adversity in which disinformation is systematically disseminated by a variety of politically and economically motivated actors who seek to delay or defang climate policies. I review the strategies of climate denial and how they fit within an historical arc ranging from denial of the adverse health effects of tobacco to the denial of facts and policies involving the COVID-19 pandemic. I review communicative countermeasures and conclude by pointing to the necessity to examine whether science denial is a necessary implication of libertarianism or whether it can be reframed to become an ally in climate mitigation and public-health policies.

Misinformation and disinformation campaigns pose a significant threat to democracy. These campaigns not only spread false information but also undermine confidence in elections and the reliance on reliable information for policy decisions. Examples include the disinformation surrounding the 2020 US presidential election and the climate change denial funded by the fossil fuel industry. Attacks on scientists and researchers who study misinformation have also become a new frontier in these campaigns. Efforts to combat misinformation include legislative measures and educational initiatives such as inoculation, which aims to protect individuals from being misled by teaching them about the techniques used in misinformation. However, the implementation of these initiatives may face challenges in certain political contexts. [Extracted from the article]

This study investigated the refutation of equivocal claims using counterarguments. Common sense suggests that more counterarguments should be more effective at inducing belief change. However, some researchers have argued that in persuasive reasoning, using too many arguments might lead to counterproductive skepticism and reactance. Thus, there have been calls to actively curtail the number of counterarguments used in refutations to avoid risking an “overkill backfire effect”—an ironic strengthening of beliefs from too many counterarguments. In three experiments, we tested whether calls to limit the number of counterarguments are justified. We found that a larger number of counterarguments (between four and six) led to as much or more belief reduction compared to a smaller number of (two) counterarguments. This was not merely an effect arising from a simple numerosity heuristic, as counterarguments had to be relevant to affect beliefs: irrelevant counterarguments failed to reduce beliefs even though perceived as moderately persuasive.

ABSTRACTMandatory vaccinations are widely debated since they restrict individuals’ autonomy in their health decisions. As healthcare professionals (HCPs) are a common target group of vaccine mandates, and also form a link between vaccination policies and the public, understanding their attitudes toward vaccine mandates is important. The present study investigated physicians’ attitudes to COVID-19 vaccine mandates in four European countries: Finland, France, Germany, and Portugal. An electronic survey assessing attitudes to COVID-19 vaccine mandates and general vaccination attitudes (e.g. perceived vaccine safety, trust in health authorities, and openness to patients) was sent to physicians in the spring of 2022. A total of 2796 physicians responded. Across all countries, 78% of the physicians were in favor of COVID-19 vaccine mandates for HCPs, 49% favored COVID-19 vaccine mandates for the public, and 67% endorsed COVID-19 health passes. Notable differences were observed between countries, with attitudes to mandates found to be more positive in countries where the mandate, or similar mandates, were in effect. The associations between attitudes to mandates and general vaccination attitudes were mostly small to neglectable and differed between countries. Nevertheless, physicians with more positive mandate attitudes perceived vaccines as more beneficial (in Finland and France) and had greater trust in medical authorities (in France and Germany). The present study contributes to the body of research within social and behavioral sciences that support evidence-based vaccination policymaking.

ABSTRACTVaccine hesitancy has become a threat to public health, especially as it is a phenomenon that has also been observed among healthcare professionals. In this study, we analyzed the relationship between endorsement of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and vaccination attitudes and behaviors among healthcare professionals, using a cross-sectional sample of physicians with vaccination responsibilities from four European countries: Germany, Finland, Portugal, and France (total N = 2,787). Our results suggest that, in all the participating countries, CAM endorsement is associated with lower frequency of vaccine recommendation, lower self-vaccination rates, and being more open to patients delaying vaccination, with these relationships being mediated by distrust in vaccines. A latent profile analysis revealed that a profile characterized by higher-than-average CAM endorsement and lower-than-average confidence and recommendation of vaccines occurs, to some degree, among 19% of the total sample, although these percentages varied from one country to another: 23.72% in Germany, 17.83% in France, 9.77% in Finland, and 5.86% in Portugal. These results constitute a call to consider health care professionals’ attitudes toward CAM as a factor that could hinder the implementation of immunization campaigns.

We welcome the nine constructive and insightful commentaries on our target article. The commentaries proposed a number of creative, evidence-based applications of the principles we proposed. Here we identify common themes among the commentaries, including one relating to the political intentionality underlying much disinformation that we only partially addressed and that thus had remained shrouded in mist. We synthesize the suggestions from the commentary into a proposal that may help overcome the post-truth malaise, provided a final obstacle can be overcome. This obstacle is the gorilla in the room: Policy making in the United States is largely independent of the public's wishes but serves the interests of economic elites.

The terms “post-truth” and “fake news” have become increasingly prevalent in public discourse over the last year. This article explores the growing abundance of misinformation, how it influences people, and how to counter it. We examine the ways in which misinformation can have an adverse impact on society. We summarize how people respond to corrections of misinformation, and what kinds of corrections are most effective. We argue that to be effective, scientific research into misinformation must be considered within a larger political, technological, and societal context. The post-truth world emerged as a result of societal mega-trends such as a decline in social capital, growing economic inequality, increased polarization, declining trust in science, and an increasingly fractionated media landscape. We suggest that responses to this malaise must involve technological solutions incorporating psychological principles, an interdisciplinary approach that we describe as “technocognition.” We outline a number of recommendations to counter misinformation in a post-truth world.

People frequently rely on information even after it has been retracted, a phenomenon known as the continued-influence effect of misinformation. One factor proposed to explain the ineffectiveness of retractions is that repeating misinformation during a correction may inadvertently strengthen the misinformation by making it more familiar. Practitioners are therefore often encouraged to design corrections that avoid misinformation repetition. The current study tested this recommendation, investigating whether retractions become more or less effective when they include reminders or repetitions of the initial misinformation. Participants read fictional reports, some of which contained retractions of previous information, and inferential reasoning was measured via questionnaire. Retractions varied in the extent to which they served as misinformation reminders. Retractions that explicitly repeated the misinformation were more effective in reducing misinformation effects than retractions that avoided repetition, presumably because of enhanced salience. Recommendations for effective myth debunking may thus need to be revised.

Democracy relies on a shared body of knowledge among citizens, for example trust in elections and reliable knowledge to inform policy-relevant debate. We review the evidence for widespread disinformation campaigns that are undermining this shared knowledge. We establish a common pattern by which science and scientists are discredited and how the most recent frontier in those attacks involves researchers in misinformation itself. We list several ways in which psychology can contribute to countermeasures.

Facebook, Twitter and other social media are not per seincompatible with democracy. Is the global decline in democracy linked to social media? It might arise becausepeople who produce hate speech use social media more, rather thanbecause using social media triggers hate speech. [Extracted from the article]

Although conspiracy theories are only endorsed by a minority, conspiracy theories can nonetheless compromise public health measures to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals who endorse conspiracy theories were less likely to wear masks, comply with social distancing, or get vaccinated. This poses a challenge to public health policy, in particular because vaccine uptake lags behind targets because of resistance from a relatively small, but highly vocal, number of people. One policy tool is to enact vaccine mandates, which, while controversial, have successfully increased vaccination uptake. In this article, we review the evidence about whether mandates can be successful, and whether they trigger increased opposition and conspiracy beliefs. We discuss the implications for using mandates in public health policy and argue that decisions about mandates need to be weighed against the consequences of alternative measures—which may also increase conspiracy beliefs albeit for different reasons.

The question of how climate model projections have tracked the actual evolution of global mean surface air temperature is important in establishing the credibility of their projections. Some studies and the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report suggest that the recent 15-year period (1998–2012) provides evidence that models are overestimating current temperature evolution. Such comparisons are not evidence against model trends because they represent only one realization where the decadal natural variability component of the model climate is generally not in phase with observations. We present a more appropriate test of models where only those models with natural variability (represented by El Niño/Southern Oscillation) largely in phase with observations are selected from multi-model ensembles for comparison with observations. These tests show that climate models have provided good estimates of 15-year trends, including for recent periods and for Pacific spatial trend patterns.

Although most experts agree that CO2emissions are causing anthropogenic global warming (AGW), public concern has been declining. One reason for this decline is the ‘manufacture of doubt’ by political and vested interests, which often challenge the existence of the scientific consensus. The role of perceived consensus in shaping public opinion is therefore of considerable interest: in particular, it is unknown whether consensus determines people’s beliefs causally. It is also unclear whether perception of consensus can override people’s ‘worldviews’, which are known to foster rejection of AGW. Study 1 shows that acceptance of several scientific propositions—from HIV/AIDS to AGW—is captured by a common factor that is correlated with another factor that captures perceived scientific consensus. Study 2 reveals a causal role of perceived consensus by showing that acceptance of AGW increases when consensus is highlighted. Consensus information also neutralizes the effect of worldview.

Stephan Lewandowsky and Dorothy Bishop explain how the research community should protect its members from harassment, while encouraging the openness that has become essential to science.

This chapter reviews the current status of research on expertise, with a tripartite emphasis on expertise acquisition, the limitations associated with expertise, and the extent to which expert skill performance is subject to conscious control. We outline how deliberate practice often enables experts to perform their skills automatically, and we explain the limitations and costs associated with this automaticity. Those limitations include its specificity, brittleness, and limited ability to be transferred to new tasks. Further costs include expediency, mediocrity, and inflexibility. We next discuss whether and in which situations experts are able to exert conscious control over their automatic skills, with the finding that the exertion of control is sometimes at a short-term cost to performance. Finally, we emphasize pragmatic means by which expert performance can be enhanced, either by avoiding known pitfalls or by increasing the level of control that experts can exert over their own behavior.

Abstract: Is memory temporally organized? According to temporal distinctiveness models of memory, temporally isolated items should be better remembered than temporally crowded items in free recall tasks. Here, we tested this class of model by varying the temporal isolation of items either predictably (Experiment 1) or unpredictably (Experiment 2) in a free recall task. In both experiments, item recall probability increased as a function of the temporal gaps both before and after the item. The results are taken as support for temporal distinctiveness models of memory, in which items are represented and recalled in terms of their positions along a temporal dimension.

Abstract: Time-based theories expect memory performance to decline as the delay between study and recall of an item increases. The assumption of time-based forgetting, central to many models of serial recall, underpins their key behaviors. Here we compare the predictions of time-based and event-based models by simulation and test them in two experiments using a novel manipulation of the delay between study and retrieval. Participants were trained, via corrective feedback, to recall at different speeds, thus varying total recall time from 6 to 10 sec. In the first experiment, participants used the keyboard to enter their responses but had to repeat a word (called thesuppressor) aloud during recall to prevent rehearsal. In the second experiment, articulation was again required, but recall was verbal and was paced by the number of repetitions of the suppressor in between retrieval of items. In both experiments, serial position curves for all retrieval speeds overlapped, and output time had little or no effect. Comparative evaluation of a time-based and an event-based model confirmed that these results present a particular challenge to time-based approaches. We conclude that output interference, rather than output time, is critical in serial recall.

Abstract: We introduce a distributed model of memory for serial order, called SOB, that produces ordered serial recall by relying on encoding and retrieval processes that are endogenous to the model. SOB explains the basic shape of the serial position curve, the pattern of errors during recall (including the balance between transpositions, omissions, intrusions, and erroneous repetitions), the effects of list length on the distribution of errors, the overall level of recall and response latency, and the effects of natural language frequency on recall performance. In addition, contrary to several recent suggestions, SOB demonstrates that distributed representations can support unambiguous recall, selective response suppression, and novelty-sensitive encoding.

Abstract: Numerically small disciplines can be jeopardized by geographic difficulties, if student populations at universities are small and distances between them large. This problem could be addressed, if teaching resources could be shared among several universities and students in several locations could be taught simultaneously. We present the results of a trial in simultaneous Internet and videoconferencing delivery of an introductory cognitive science laboratory. The trial relied on off-the-shelf software and hardware. Students found the delivery nearly as effective as a locally run laboratory, despite a noticeable difference in the level of interactivity between the remote and other, local laboratory classes. We discuss possible further improvements in teaching efficiency and efficacy.

Abstract: A method for multidimensional scaling that is highly resistant to the effects of outliers is described. To illustrate the efficacy of the procedure, some Monte Carlo simulation results are presented. The method is shown to perform well when outliers are present, even in relatively large numbers, and also to perform comparably to other approaches when no outliers are present.

Bushfires have been a common occurrence across Australia for millennia. With the growing expansion of urban areas into surrounding bushland, fires pose an increasing threat to life and property. The extent of damage caused by a fire is a function of many variables, including the decision-making processes and expertise of bushfire-fighters. Previous research has shown that expert fire-fighters sometimes underestimate. the importance of terrain variables when predicting the spread of a fire. This article reports two ways in which experts' predictions can be improved. First, an experimental comparison of training regimes shows that visual aids can facilitate the acquisition of a more integrative mental model of fire behaviour. Second, a computer-assisted display is proposed that increases the salience of critical variables in a simulation of bushfires.

The article discusses why many scientific findings are being rejected due to conspirational thinking. By believing in conspiracy theories, people are said to be able to make sense out of a confusing reality. There is a statistical association between people's rejection of scientific findings and their endorsement of conspiracy theories.

The article offers the authors' insight on the article "The Science Police," by Keith Kloor which claims censorship of research on the slowdown of climate change. They mention that Kloor claims that his complaint were supported by scientific articles, suggesting that natural variability should be ignored. They say that they authored such articles, but they encourage research on natural climate variability. They also note that research is important to conclude a slowdown in climate change.

The article discusses the role of cognitive science and psychology in understanding the persistent gap between established facts of climate science and their acceptance by the public. Topics discussed include impact of greenhouse gas emissions from human economic activity on global warming and climatic changes, competency of the public about the need to manage resistance to climate science, and public scepticism about the reality of global warming in Anglophone countries.

The article discusses a report by James Painter and colleagues which notes that about 82 per cent of articles about climate change are framed in the context of disaster and uncertainty. It is noted that Painter and colleagues believe that perceived uncertainty has a detrimental effect on people's willingness to act and uncertainty in the context of climate change is known to breed wishful thinking a that things may not be as bad as thought.

Abstract: Use of the World-Wide Web among academics has grown explosively during the last few years. To date, most applications of the Web have focused on the storage and dissemination of relatively static information, in part because of the cost associated with manual collating and updating of data. This paper presents an example of a dynamic worldwide database devoted to maintaining inherently transient information: The database accepts international travel itineraries submitted by individual academic psychologists, and makes them publicly available to potential hosts on the basis of various search keys. The objective of the database (http://www.psy.uwa.edu.au/wave/) is to facilitate international exchange among academics.

One widely used approach for quantifying misinformation consumption and sharing is to evaluate the quality of the news domains that a user interacts with. However, different media organizations and fact-checkers have produced different sets of news domain quality ratings, raising questions about the reliability of these ratings. In this study, we compared six sets of expert ratings and found that they generally correlated highly with one another. We then created a comprehensive set of domain ratings for use by the research community (github.com/hauselin/domain-quality-ratings), leveraging an ensemble "wisdom of experts" approach. To do so, we performed imputation together with principal component analysis to generate a set of aggregate ratings. The resulting rating set comprises 11,520 domains-the most extensive coverage to date-and correlates well with other rating sets that have more limited coverage. Together, these results suggest that experts generally agree on the relative quality of news domains, and the aggregate ratings that we generate offer a powerful research tool for evaluating the quality of news consumed or shared and the efficacy of misinformation interventions., (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences.)

Increased sharing of untrustworthy information on social media platforms is one of the main challenges of our modern information society. Because information disseminated by political elites is known to shape citizen and media discourse, it is particularly important to examine the quality of information shared by politicians. Here, we show that from 2016 onward, members of the Republican Party in the US Congress have been increasingly sharing links to untrustworthy sources. The proportion of untrustworthy information posted by Republicans versus Democrats is diverging at an accelerating rate, and this divergence has worsened since President Biden was elected. This divergence between parties seems to be unique to the United States as it cannot be observed in other western democracies such as Germany and the United Kingdom, where left-right disparities are smaller and have remained largely constant., Competing Interests: Competing Interest: The authors declare no competing interest.