ReviewProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
(Mis)informed about what? What it means to be a science-literate citizen in a digital world.
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 32 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
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- Vulnerability to the Effects of Conflicting Health Information: Testing the Moderating Roles of Trust in News Media and Research Literacy.Health education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education · 2023Trial
- Long-term media effects on public attitudes toward science in Switzerland: A panel survey of the Swiss population.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2026Article
- Bridging functional bionanomaterials and the clinic: strategic communication as a translational enabler.Journal of nanobiotechnology · 2026Review
- Evidence, trust, and objectivity with generative AI: a qualitative interview study of pre-service science teachers' truth-assessment practices.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Observational
- Using a flipped classroom teaching and learning approach to promote scientific literacy skill development and retention.FEBS open bio · 2025Article
- How can we make sound replication decisions?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- A scoping review and expert consensus on digital determinants of health.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2025Article
- Invitation appeals and STEM academic scientists research participation: Findings from six survey experiments.PloS one · 2025Article
- Evidence-based scientific thinking and decision-making in everyday life.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2024Article
- Students' perceptions of social issues in biology courses.Journal of microbiology & biology education · 2024Article
- Scaling the Process Chemistry of a COVID-19 Antiviral Pharmaceutical Down for a Multistep Synthesis Experiment in the Undergraduate Teaching Laboratory.Journal of chemical education · 2024Article
- Teaching epistemic integrity to promote reliable scientific communication.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Article
- Waving through a window: Agricultural research faculty perspectives on science communication challenges.PloS one · 2024Article
- Article
- Sustaining positive perceptions of science in the face of conflicting health information: An experimental test of messages about the process of scientific discovery.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2023Article
- Fighting the infodemic: the 4 i Framework for Advancing Communication and Trust.BMC public health · 2023Review
- Students Need More than Content Knowledge To Counter Vaccine Hesitancy.Journal of microbiology & biology education · 2023Article
- Synthesizing Research Narratives to Reveal the Big Picture: a CREATE(S) Intervention Modified for Journal Club Improves Undergraduate Science Literacy.Journal of microbiology & biology education · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Science literacy is often held up as crucial for avoiding science-related misinformation and enabling more informed individual and collective decision-making. But research has not yet examined whether science literacy actually enables this, nor what skills it would need to encompass to do so. In this report, we address three questions to outline what it should mean to be science literate in today's world: 1) How should we conceptualize science literacy? 2) How can we achieve this science literacy? and 3) What can we expect science literacy's most important outcomes to be? If science literacy is to truly enable people to become and stay informed (and avoid being misinformed) on complex science issues, it requires skills that span the "lifecycle" of science information. This includes how the scientific community produces science information, how media repackage and share the information, and how individuals encounter and form opinions on this information. Science literacy, then, is best conceptualized as encompassing three dimensions of literacy spanning the lifecycle: Civic science literacy, digital media science literacy, and cognitive science literacy. Achieving such science literacy, particularly for adults, poses many challenges and will likely require a structural perspective. Digital divides, in particular, are a major structural barrier, and community literacy and building science literacy into media and science communication are promising opportunities. We end with a discussion of what some of the beneficial outcomes could be-and, as importantly, will likely not be-of science literacy that furthers informed and critical engagement with science in democratic society.
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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.