ReviewProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
The narrative truth about scientific misinformation.
Review in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Overcoming health misinformation in marginalized groups: a systematic review.International journal for equity in health · 2025Pooled it
- HPV Vaccine Uptake, Hesitancy and Information Sources Among Young Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study of Korea and the US.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Review
- Improving science literacy in the newsroom: Experimental evidence.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Quality and reliability of sarcopenia-related videos on BiliBili and TikTok: a cross-sectional content analysis study.BMC public health · 2026Article
- To Pause With a Cliffhanger or a Temporary Closure? The Differential Impact of Serial Versus Episodic Narratives on Children's Physical Activity Behaviors.Communication research · 2025Article
- Shared disbelief and shared belief: Belief and disbelief as drivers of interpersonal neural synchronization during narrative processing.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- The Impact of Digital Storytelling on Presence, Immersion, Enjoyment, and Continued Usage Intention in VR-Based Museum Exhibitions.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The role of narratives in promoting vaccine confidence among Indigenous peoples in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand: a scoping review.International journal for equity in health · 2025Article
- The inaccurate citation of the "Universal Declaration of Animal Rights" (UDAR) in the scientific literature: a scoping review.BMC veterinary research · 2025Article
- "You are Telling the Story Yourself": Defining and Developing Narrative Pictorial Warning Labels.Health communication · 2024Article
- Creating a Culturally Safe Online Data Collection Instrument to Measure Vaccine Confidence Among Indigenous Youth: Indigenous Consensus Method.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Knowing Well, Being Well: well-being born of understanding: The Urgent Need for Coordinated and Comprehensive Efforts to Combat Misinformation.American journal of health promotion : AJHP · 2022Article
- Human trafficking and the growing malady of disinformation.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Agent Based Model of Anti-Vaccination Movements: Simulations and Comparison with Empirical Data.Vaccines · 2021Article
- The narrative truth about scientific misinformation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Review
- Misinformation about science in the public sphere.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Science and storytelling mean different things when they speak of truth. This difference leads some to blame storytelling for presenting a distorted view of science and contributing to misinformation. Yet others celebrate storytelling as a way to engage audiences and share accurate scientific information. This review disentangles the complexities of how storytelling intersects with scientific misinformation. Storytelling is the act of sharing a narrative, and science and narrative represent two distinct ways of constructing reality. Where science searches for broad patterns that capture general truths about the world, narratives search for connections through human experience that assign meaning and value to reality. I explore how these contrasting conceptions of truth manifest across different contexts to either promote or counter scientific misinformation. I also identify gaps in the literature and identify promising future areas of research. Even with their differences, the underlying purpose of both science and narrative seeks to make sense of the world and find our place within it. While narrative can indeed lead to scientific misinformation, narrative can also help science counter misinformation by providing meaning to reality that incorporates accurate science knowledge into human experience.
Indexed as
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.