ArticleNature communications2019
Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians.
Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sampling and processing of climate change information and disinformation across three diverse countries.British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953) · 2026Article
- Increasing digital media visibility and tourism messaging promote US National Park system integration.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Article
- Epistemic language in news headlines shapes readers' perceptions of objectivity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Psychological inoculation strategies to fight climate disinformation across 12 countries.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Article
- Understanding scientists' communication challenges at the intersection of climate and agriculture.PloS one · 2022Article
- Deconstruction of the discourse authority of scientists in Chinese online science communication: Investigation of citizen science communicators on Chinese knowledge sharing networks.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2021Article
- Messaging on Slow Impacts: Applying Lessons Learned from Climate Change Communication to Catalyze and Improve Marine Nutrient Communication.Frontiers in environmental science · 2021Article
- Fentanyl panic goes viral: The spread of misinformation about overdose risk from casual contact with fentanyl in mainstream and social media.The International journal on drug policy · 2020Article
- Weight-of-Evidence Strategies to Mitigate the Influence of Messages of Science Denialism in Public Discussions.Journal of cognition · 2020Article
- In climate news, statements from large businesses and opponents of climate action receive heightened visibility.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Environmental lipidomics: understanding the response of organisms and ecosystems to a changing world.Metabolomics : Official journal of the Metabolomic Society · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We juxtapose 386 prominent contrarians with 386 expert scientists by tracking their digital footprints across ∼200,000 research publications and ∼100,000 English-language digital and print media articles on climate change. Projecting these individuals across the same backdrop facilitates quantifying disparities in media visibility and scientific authority, and identifying organization patterns within their association networks. Here we show via direct comparison that contrarians are featured in 49% more media articles than scientists. Yet when comparing visibility in mainstream media sources only, we observe just a 1% excess visibility, which objectively demonstrates the crowding out of professional mainstream sources by the proliferation of new media sources, many of which contribute to the production and consumption of climate change disinformation at scale. These results demonstrate why climate scientists should increasingly exert their authority in scientific and public discourse, and why professional journalists and editors should adjust the disproportionate attention given to contrarians.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.