ArticleScientific reports2025
The impacts of expertise, conflict, and scientific literacy on trust and belief in scientific disagreements.
Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 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
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Can Knowledge Counteract Conflict? A Partial Replication Study of PFAS Science Communication.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2026Article
- Communicating Risk in the Age of Misinformation: Empirical Frameworks for Understanding Stakeholder Trust.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2026Article
- Authors' academic but not personal expertise or gender affect message credibility in science communication.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Trust transfer from medical AI to doctors and hospitals: Integrating digital, AI, and scientific literacy in a cross-sectional framework.BMC medical ethics · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Media portrayals of scientific disagreements can blur distinctions between experts and non-experts, or include disagreements from vested individuals, potentially undermining trust in science and belief in scientific claims. We investigated how disagreeing sources' expertise and conflicting interests impact trust in scientific experts and belief in their claims, and whether scientific literacy moderates these effects. Across three, 2 × 2 factorial experiments with a student (N = 105) online (N = 110), and general Australian sample (N = 105), participants read articles describing a scientific claim followed by a disagreeing source whose subject-matter expertise (present/absent) and vested interest (present/absent) were manipulated. Participants in all samples judged the original scientific expert as more trustworthy and their claims more believable when the disagreeing source lacked relevant subject-matter expertise. Among student participants, conflicts of interest also impacted belief in scientific claims (but not trust in the scientist), and scientific literacy enhanced sensitivity to expertise and conflict, however, the other samples were largely insensitive to vested interests, and scientific literacy had varied effects in these samples. Our results show disagreement in the news, even from questionable sources, can sway evaluations of scientific claims and scientists, and highlight the value of literacy-based interventions in science communication.
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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.