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We identify points of conflict and consensus regarding (a) controversial empirical claims and (b) normative preferences for how controversial scholarship—and scholars—should be treated. In 2021, we conducted qualitative interviews (n = 41) to generate a quantitative survey (N = 470) of U.S. psychology professors’ beliefs and values. Professors strongly disagreed on the truth status of 10 candidate taboo conclusions: For each conclusion, some professors reported 100% certainty in its veracity and others 100% certainty in its falsehood. Professors more confident in the truth of the taboo conclusions reported more self-censorship, a pattern that could bias perceived scientific consensus regarding the inaccuracy of controversial conclusions. Almost all professors worried about social sanctions if they were to express their own empirical beliefs. Tenured professors reported as much self-censorship and as much fear of consequences as untenured professors, including fear of getting fired. Most professors opposed suppressing scholarship and punishing peers on the basis of moral concerns about research conclusions and reported contempt for peers who petition to retract papers on moral grounds. Younger, more left-leaning, and female faculty were generally more opposed to controversial scholarship. These results do not resolve empirical or normative disagreements among psychology professors, but they may provide an empirical context for their discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of misinformation is a pressing societal challenge. Prior work shows that shifting attention to accuracy increases the quality of people's news-sharing decisions. However, researchers disagree on whether accuracy-prompt interventions work for U.S. Republicans/conservatives and whether partisanship moderates the effect. In this preregistered adversarial collaboration, we tested this question using a multiverse meta-analysis (k = 21; N = 27,828). In all 70 models, accuracy prompts improved sharing discernment among Republicans/conservatives. We observed significant partisan moderation for single-headline "evaluation" treatments (a critical test for one research team) such that the effect was stronger among Democrats than Republicans. However, this moderation was not consistently robust across different operationalizations of ideology/partisanship, exclusion criteria, or treatment type. Overall, we observed significant partisan moderation in 50% of specifications (all of which were considered critical for the other team). We discuss the conditions under which moderation is observed and offer interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a friendly amendment to integrative experiment design (IED), adversarial-collaboration IED, that incentivizes research teams from competing theoretical perspectives to identify zones of the design space where they possess an explanatory edge. This amendment is especially critical in debates that have high policy stakes and carry a strong normative-political charge that might otherwise prevent free exchange of ideas.