ArticleNature human behaviour2025
Political ideology and trust in scientists in the USA.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 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
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Party identification and public attitudes toward raw milk, water fluoridation, and acetaminophen use.Health affairs scholar · 2026Article
- Representation in science and trust in scientists in the USA.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Ideological polarization on anthropogenic climate change is stronger among politicians than among citizens across eight countries.Communications sustainability · 2026Article
- Confronting medical grifting: Fraudulent and unproven products and interventions in apheresis, transfusion and biotherapies.British journal of haematology · 2025Review
- The Scientific and Sociopolitical Harms of Conceptual Imprecision About Sex and Gender.Archives of sexual behavior · 2025Article
- How stupid has science been?EMBO reports · 2025Article
- The role of worldviews, radicalization risk factors, and personality in harassment of scientists.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Editorial: Climate change challenge: adaptation to climate change.Frontiers in psychology · 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
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Trust in scientists is a key predictor of compliance with science-based solutions to societal challenges. Although liberals in the USA generally trust scientists more than conservatives do, it is not clear how these ideological differences vary across different scientific occupations and whether they can be mitigated. Here, in this Registered Report (including 7,800 US participants), we demonstrate that, even though the strength of the relationship between political ideology and trust varies across scientific occupations, liberals (compared with conservatives) show higher trust in most scientists. Moreover, following motivational accounts of scientist distrust, the study tested five theoretically grounded intervention strategies to improve conservatives' trust in scientists. None of the interventions were successful, suggesting that trust in scientists reflects relatively stable attitudes that require more elaborate and time-intensive interventions.
Indexed as
Identifiers
40229576What 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.