Contested evidence: Exposure to competing scientific claims and public support for banning bisphenol A.

The public controversy surrounding bisphenol A (BPA) revolves around competing claims about what scientific evidence shows regarding the effects of the chemical on human health. This study uses an experiment embedded within a public opinion survey to test the effects of exposure to such claims on public support for banning the use of BPA in products. Exposure to the claim that "there is not enough scientific evidence that BPA harms human health" reduced support, whereas exposure to the claim that there "is enough scientific evidence" failed to increase support. No effect emerged among those simultaneously exposed to both claims. The "not enough evidence" claim influenced less educated respondents and women but not college-educated respondents or men. Aspects of the underlying structure of opinion also differed depending on which claim(s) respondents received. The results illuminate how members of the public respond to competing scientific claims regarding controversial issues.

What if some people just do not like science? How personality traits relate to attitudes toward science and technology.

As societal discussion on the public opinion of science and technology ignites over and over again, understanding where such opinions are rooted is increasingly relevant. A handful of prior studies have suggested personality traits as a root of science and technology attitudes. However, these report mixed findings, and employ small student or convenience samples. This leaves considerable uncertainty regarding personality traits' relation to attitudes toward science and technology. If in fact stable psychological predispositions play a role, this has considerable implications for science policy and science communication. This article investigates the relationship between the big five personality traits and science attitudes in Germany and the Netherlands. Findings indicate that personality traits are related to science attitudes but only very weakly so, among them openness to experience and negative emotionality are most notably related to science attitudes, whereas extraversion, in contrast to prior studies, shows no relation to science and technology attitudes.

Scientism, trust, value alignment, views of nature, and U.S. public opinion about gene drive mosquitos.

Gene drive could be a powerful tool for addressing problems of conservation, agriculture, and human health caused by insect and animal pests but is likely to be controversial as it involves the release of genetically modified organisms. This study examined the social determinants of opinion of gene drive. We asked a representative sample of the U.S. public to respond to a description of a hypothetical application of a gene-drive mosquito to the problem of malaria and examined the relationship of these responses with demographic and ideological beliefs. We found strong general approval for the use of gene-drive mosquitos to address malaria, coinciding with the concern about a possible environmental impact of modified mosquitos and that gene drives represent "too much power over nature." Among the determinants we measured, respondent acceptance of scientism and trust that scientists are advancing the public's interest were the greatest predictors of views of gene drive.

'Follow the science': Popular trust in scientific experts during the coronavirus pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic increased the role played by scientific advisers in counselling governments and citizens on issues around public health. This raises questions about how citizens evaluate scientists, and in particular the grounds on which they trust them. Previous studies have identified various factors associated with trust in scientists, although few have systematically explored a range of judgements and their relative effects. This study takes advantage of scientific advisers' heightened public profile during the pandemic to explore how people's trust in scientists is shaped by perceptions of their features and traits, along with evaluations of their behaviour and role within the decision-making process. The study also considers people's trust in politicians, thereby enabling us to identify whether trust in scientists reflects similar or distinctive considerations to trust in partisan actors. Data are derived from specially designed conjoint experiments and surveys of nationally representative samples in Britain and the United States.

Counteracting climate denial: A systematic review.

Despite scientific consensus on climate change, climate denial is still widespread. While much research has characterised climate denial, comparatively fewer studies have systematically examined how to counteract it. This review fills this gap by exploring the research about counteracting climate denial, the effectiveness and the intentions behind intervention. Through a systematic selection and analysis of 65 scientific articles, this review finds multiple intervention forms, including education, message framing and inoculation. The intentions of intervening range from changing understanding of climate science, science advocacy, influencing mitigation attitudes and counteracting vested industry. A number of divergent findings emerge: whether to separate science from policy; the disputed effects of emotions and the longitudinal impacts of interventions. The review offers guiding questions for those interested in counteracting denialism, the answers to which indicate particular strategies: identify the form of climate denial; consider the purpose of intervention and recognise one's relationship to their audiences.

The politics of politicization: Climate change debates in Canadian print media.

Politicization is frequently employed as an analytic concept to explain the relationships between politics and media coverage of climate change. However, relatively few works explore how different notions of politicization are mobilized by actors in media discourses themselves. This article does so via a framing analysis of climate change coverage in Canadian newspapers. I investigate how different relationships between science and politics are conceived and associated with varying positions on climate change. In particular, I examine a supposition in science and technology studies that the media remains committed to deficit models and thus uncritically reproduces the authority of science. Scientistic discourses exist but among a diversity of politicization framings. A key finding is that the strongest appeals to scientific neutrality are associated with climate skepticism. This casts light on the nuanced, strategic "politics of politicization" in climate change debates. A more fine-grained and reflexive approach to politicization discourses can help identify productive interventions.

The acceptance of evolution: A developmental view of Generation X in the United States.

The public acceptance of evolution remains a contentious issue in the United States. Numerous investigations have used national cross-sectional studies to examine the factors associated with the acceptance or rejection of evolution. This analysis uses a 33-year longitudinal study that followed the same 5000 public-school students from grade 7 through midlife (ages 45-48) and is the first to do so in regard to evolution. A set of structural equation models demonstrate the complexity and changing nature of influences over these three decades. Parents and local influences are strong during the high school years. The combination of post-secondary education and occupational and family choices demonstrate that the 15 years after high school are the switchyards of life.

Relationships among affective factors and preferred engagement in science-related activities.

This study investigated how affective factors impact participation in science learning using structural equation modeling. Using a dataset from Taiwan, a model was obtained that showed the relationships among science-related interest, enjoyment, self-efficacy, self-concept, competency, leisure time engagement, and future interest in science. The paths relating to engagement and future interest were much stronger for interest and enjoyment than for self-efficacy and self-concept. There was no significant path between science competency and future science interest or engagement. The results suggest that the affective and cognitive pathways to scientific competency are divergent and that they might be differentially activated by different contexts and activities. This indicates that school science educators might wish to reconsider the merit of overemphasizing achievement in comparison to interest. Finally, the results suggest that the development of science competency per se may not be the best way to ensure public engagement and understanding of science.

The weight of communication: The Canadian Medical Association Journal's discourse on obesity.

In this exploratory analysis, I use a Burkean dramatist approach to investigate the relatively under-examined dynamics of how medical knowledge on obesity has changed outside of the American context. I examine how, over the past forty years, Canadian medical professionals have used the Canadian Medical Association Journal to generate a field of knowledge which organizes the ways in which obesity can be described, studied and treated. I argue that since the 1970s medical professionals have been increasingly interested in the relationship between obesity and a broadly defined social environment, and that this merger is rhetorically realized in the concept of the "obesogenic environment." I suggest that the process of engaging obesity has generated rhetoric that has often been resonant with the political ideologies expressed in health policy, but that can also create opportunities for the expression of alternative social goals.

The influence of cultural capital on consumption of scientific culture: A survey of visitors to an open house event at a public scientific research institution.

Based on the concept of cultural capital, this study explores the relationship between habitual behaviors of individuals regarding their past accumulation of such capital and current responses to a scientific institute's public outreach activity. At an open house held at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), anonymous questionnaires were distributed among 1,350 visitors and collected from 785 of them (collection rate = 58.1%). The results, measuring the past five to six years, showed that the respondents accumulated cultural capital through participation in scientific activities as well as in activities involving art, music, and literature. Given these quantified values, correlations between citizens' levels of accumulated cultural capital and their current scientific consumption behavior were studied. A statistical analysis of the two components of cultural capital (science and technology/art and literature) showed that people's accumulated scientific capital influenced their current behavior and revealed a correlation between the two components.

Just another clickbait title: A corpus-driven investigation of negative attitudes toward science on Reddit.

The public understanding of science has produced a large body of research about general attitudes toward science. However, most studies of science attitudes have been carried out via surveys or in experimental conditions, and few make use of the growing contexts of online science communication to investigate attitudes without researcher intervention. This study adopted corpus-based discourse analysis to investigate the negative attitudes held toward science by users of the social media website Reddit, specifically the forum r/science. A large corpus of comments made to r/science was collected and mined for keywords. Analysis of keywords identified several sources of negative attitudes, such as claims that scientists can be corruptible, poor communicators, and misleading. Research methodologies were negatively evaluated on the basis of small sample sizes. Other commenters negatively evaluated social science research, especially psychology, as being pseudoscientific, and several commenters described science journalism as untrustworthy or sensationalized.

Heterogeneous attitudinal profiles towards gene editing: Evidence from latent class analysis.

Advances in gene-editing technology have important implications for the treatment and prevention of disease. Accordingly, it is important to understand public perceptions towards gene editing, as the public's willingness to endorse gene editing may be as important as technological breakthroughs themselves. Previous research has almost exclusively examined attitudes towards gene editing on specific issues, but has not addressed how attitudes towards gene editing across a range of issues coalesce in individuals: that is, the degree to which discrete, heterogeneous attitudinal profiles exist versus a simple support/oppose continuum. Here, we addressed this issue using latent class analysis on data from The Pew Research Center (N = 4726; US residents) across a wide range of gene-editing topics. We found that attitudes towards gene editing cohere into 10 distinct latent classes that showed some evidence of a support/oppose continuum, but also for clear qualitative differences between each class, even with support or oppose classes, on a number of issues. The most opposed classes significantly differed from the supporter classes in age, sex, political ideology and self-rated knowledge. These findings provide evidence that attitudes towards gene editing are heterogeneous and public discourse, as well as policy making need to consider a range of arguments when evaluating this technology.

Constructing the public in public perceptions research: A case study of forest genomics.

Contemporary scientific and technological endeavours face public and political pressure to adopt open, transparent and democratically accountable practices of public engagement. Prior research has identified different ways that experts 'imagine publics' - as uninformed, as disengaged, as a risk to science, and as co-producers of knowledge - but there has yet to be a systematic exploration of how these views emerge, interact and evolve. This article introduces a typology of imagined publics to analyse how publics are constructed in the field of forest genomics. We find that deficit views of publics have not been replaced by co-production. Instead, deficit and co-productive approaches to publics co-exist and overlap, informing both how publics are characterized and how public perceptions are studied. We outline an agenda for deepening and expanding research on public perceptions of novel technologies. Specifically, we call for more diverse and complex methodological approaches that account for relational dynamics over time.

Public assessment of new surveillance-oriented security technologies: Beyond the trade-off between privacy and security.

As surveillance-oriented security technologies (SOSTs) are considered security enhancing but also privacy infringing, citizens are expected to trade part of their privacy for higher security. Drawing from the PRISE project, this study casts some light on how citizens actually assess SOSTs through a combined analysis of focus groups and survey data. First, the outcomes suggest that people did not assess SOSTs in abstract terms but in relation to the specific institutional and social context of implementation. Second, from this embedded viewpoint, citizens either expressed concern about government's surveillance intentions and considered SOSTs mainly as privacy infringing, or trusted political institutions and believed that SOSTs effectively enhanced their security. None of them, however, seemed to trade privacy for security because concerned citizens saw their privacy being infringed without having their security enhanced, whilst trusting citizens saw their security being increased without their privacy being affected.

The image of scientific researchers and their activity in Greek adolescents' drawings.

The image prevailing among the public of scientific research and researchers constitutes a contradictory and complex combination of traditional stereotypes. We explore central facets of the image of scientific research and researchers as reflected in Greek adolescent students' drawings. Drawings were produced by 171 students participating in a drawing competition launched in the context of the "Researchers' Night 2007" implemented by three research institutions in Greece. Analysis of students' drawings involved dimensions related to the image of scientific researchers and of scientific research. Outcomes indicate that the students hold fairly outdated views of scientific researchers and their activity, involving stereotypic views of scientists and science, as well as gender stereotypes. Therefore there is an urgent need to promote a more relevant image of scientific researchers and their activity to young people and especially students.

Conflicting stories about public scientific controversies: Effects of news convergence and divergence on scientists' credibility.

Surveys suggest that approximately one third of news consumers have encountered conflicting reports of the same information. News coverage of science is especially prone to conflict, but how news consumers perceive this situation is currently unknown. College students (N = 242) participated in a lab experiment where they were exposed to news coverage about one of two scientific controversies in the United States: dioxin in sewage sludge or the reintroduction of gray wolves to populated areas. Participants received (a) one news article (control), (b) two news articles that were consistent (convergent), or (c) two news articles that conflicted (divergent). The effects of divergence induced uncertainty differed by news story. Greater uncertainty was associated with increased scientists' credibility ratings for those reading dioxin regulation articles and decreased scientists' credibility ratings for those reading wolf reintroduction articles. Unlike other manifestations of uncertainty in scientific discourse, conflicting stories seem to generate effects that vary significantly by topic. Consistent with uncertainty management theory, uncertainty is embraced or rejected by situation.

Engagement patterns with female and male scientists on Facebook.

Social networks are becoming powerful agents mediating between science and the public. Considering the public tendency to associate science with men makes investigating representations of female scientists in social media important. Here we set out to find whether the commenting patterns to text-based science communication are similar. To examine these, we collected and analyzed posts (165) and their comments (10,006) published between 2016 and 2018 on an Israeli popular science Facebook page. We examined post characteristics as well as the relevance and sentiment of comments. Several gendered differences in commenting patterns emerged. Posts published by female scientists received more irrelevant and fewer relevant comments. Female scientists received more hostile and positive comments. These findings are consistent with results of previous research, but also demonstrate a more nuanced understanding that when female scientists write using scientific jargon (usually an unwanted feature of popular science writing), they received less hostile comments and were given less advice.

Charting cognition: Mapping public understanding of COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic of the last 2 years (and counting) disrupted commerce, travel, workplaces, habits, and-of course-health, the world over. This study aimed to capture snapshots of the perceptions and misperceptions of COVID-19 among 27 participants from three US municipalities. These perspectives are analyzed through thematic analyses and concept maps. Such snapshots, particularly as viewed through the lens of narrative sense-making theory, capture a sample of cognitions at this unique moment in history: a little over 1 year into the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that the (mis)perceptions captured are predominantly conveyed via narratives of participants' personal experiences, and that the themes of attitudes toward precautionary measures, uncertainty, and the muddied science communication environment are prevalent. These themes suggest several salient targets for future research and current science communication, such as a focus on basic explainers, vaccinations' safety and effectiveness and the necessity of uncertainty in the practice of science.

Fertilizing morality: How religiosity and orientations toward science shape the morality, immorality, and amorality of reproductive technologies.

Scientific innovations continue to advance the possibilities of human reproduction, raising important empirical and ethical questions. In vitro fertilization, disease reproductive genetic technologies, and enhancement reproductive genetic technologies are three reproductive technologies with varying moral support. Instead of assuming moral poles, we use original, nationally representative survey data of US adults (N = 8107) and multinomial logistic regression to examine how religiosity and orientations toward science shape the moral acceptability, amorality, and the moral rejection of in vitro fertilization, disease reproductive genetic technologies, and enhancement reproductive genetic technologies. We find that increased confidence and trust in science lowered the odds of holding moral concerns, while greater religiosity was associated with higher odds of viewing these technologies as morally wrong. Moral attitudes further varied across religious tradition as certain religious groups had significantly higher odds of viewing these technologies as amoral. Findings have implications for advancing understandings of morality around the faith-science interface beyond conceptions of a moral binary.

The role of journalistic voice in communicating climate scepticism.

This brief study investigates the subtle ways that language can be used to subconsciously shape a reader's opinions about climate science within conservative news texts. To do so, our study employed techniques from critical discourse analysis to highlight the role of 'journalistic voice' and consider the granular linguistic techniques these outlets may use to subliminally validate sceptical viewpoints, while casting doubt on those espousing the consensus position. We found that certain semantic structures used in conservative climate reporting can take an otherwise apolitical analysis of climate issues, and potentially guide readers to a reactionary conclusion. Our analysis arrived at this position after undertaking a critical discourse analysis of the ways in which sceptical and non-sceptical climate 'experts' have been framed by Australia's largest conservative broadsheet newspaper, News Corp's The Australian, in the period after it changed its official position on climate to one of accepting the consensus view.