Collaborative Research: Science and Information Integrity: Strategies for Rebuilding Trust in Science

Public trust in science is declining, with widespread science information integrity issues identified as a key factor. To tackle this issue, extant research and intervention efforts primarily focus on combating fact-level threats (i.e., false beliefs) by correcting science misperceptions or alerting the public to the information integrity dangers in science. Yet, emerging evidence indicates that focusing on fact-level threats may unintentionally exacerbate trust-level threats by triggering suspicion towards all science information, even factually accurate information. While trust-level threats are broad, long-term challenges to science communication, it remains unclear how to address fact-level threats without causing trust-level threats. Filling this gap, this project theorizes and examines the cause, mechanism, and solution of trust-level threats to information integrity. This project advances theory and knowledge about enhancing the public value of scientific findings and scientific communities and offers evidence-based guidelines for the practice of effective science communication in the post-truth era. This research employs a sequential mixed methods approach. First, a national two-wave panel survey (final N = 1,000) identifies the cause of trust-level threats to information integrity by investigating various experiences and perceptions as potential triggers of declined trust in science. In particular, this research investigates the lie-default bias, a tendency to assume incoming information as a lie rather than truth, as a key mediator between science information integrity issues and distrust in science. Second, two online experiments (N = 600 each) test the unintended spillover effects of current approaches (e.g., fact-checking, literacy interventions) that aim to address fact-level threats to information integrity. Third, four focus groups with key stakeholders, including scientists, educators, journalists, and the general public (N = 20 for each group), evaluate how empirical findings from surveys and experiments may be interpreted to inform intervention strategies for maintaining information integrity with regard to fact-level and trust-level threats. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.