Correction: Controversy matters: Impacts of topic and solution controversy on the perceived credibility of a scientist who advocates.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187511.].

Correction: Controversy matters: Impacts of topic and solution controversy on the perceived credibility of a scientist who advocates.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187511.].

Scientific risk communication about controversial issues influences public perceptions of scientists' political orientations and credibility.

Many scientists communicate with the public about risks associated with scientific issues, but such communication may have unintended consequences for how the public views the political orientations and the credibility of the communicating scientist. We explore this possibility using an experiment with a nationally representative sample of Americans in the fall of 2015. We find that risk communication on controversial scientific issues sometimes influences perceptions of the political orientations and credibility of the communicating scientist when the scientist addresses the risks of issues associated with conservative or liberal groups. This relationship is moderated by participant political ideology, with liberals adjusting their perceptions of the scientists' political beliefs more substantially when the scientist addressed the risks of marijuana use when compared with other issues. Conservatives' political perceptions were less impacted by the issue context of the scientific risk communication but indirectly influenced credibility perceptions. Our results support a contextual model of audience interpretation of scientific risk communication. Scientists should be cognizant that audience members may make inferences about the communicating scientist's political orientations and credibility when they engage in risk communication efforts about controversial issues.

Controversy matters: Impacts of topic and solution controversy on the perceived credibility of a scientist who advocates.

In this article, we focus on the potential influence of a scientist's advocacy position on the public's perceived credibility of scientists as a whole. Further, we examine how the scientist's solution position (information only, non-controversial, and controversial) affects the public's perception of the scientist's motivation for sharing information about specific issues (flu, marijuana, climate change, severe weather). Finally, we assess how perceived motivations mediate the relationship between solution position and credibility. Using data from a quota sample of American adults obtained by Qualtrics (n = 2,453), we found that in some conditions advocating for a solution positively predicted credibility, while in one condition, it negatively predicted scientist credibility. We also found that the influence of solution position on perceived credibility was mediated by several motivation perceptions; most notably through perception that the scientist was motivated to: (a) serve the public and (b) persuade the public. Further results and implications are discussed.

Predictors of trust in the general science and climate science research of US federal agencies.

In this article, we focus on a key strategic objective of scientific organizations: maintaining the trust of the public. Using data from a nationally representative survey of American adults ( n = 1510), we assess the extent to which demographic factors and political ideology are associated with citizens' trust in general science and climate science research conducted by US federal agencies. Finally, we test whether priming individuals to first consider agencies' general science research influences trust in their climate science research, and vice versa. We found that federal agencies' general science research is more trusted than their climate science research-although a large minority of respondents did not have an opinion-and that political ideology has a strong influence on public trust in federal scientific research. We also found that priming participants to consider general scientific research does not increase trust in climate scientific research. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.