1. Misinformation in Science
Stephan Lewandowsky
University of Bristol and University of Western Australia
@STWorg
St. Malo, 24 October 2017

2. Misinformation in Climate Science
Stephan Lewandowsky
University of Bristol and University of Western Australia
@STWorg
St. Malo, 24 October 2017

3. Today The “post-truth” world: Do facts matter?
The crucible of the post-truth world: climate change
Misinformation in climate science
Implications of “false balance”
Communicating science under adversity

4. Today The “post-truth” world: Do facts matter?
The crucible of the post-truth world: climate change
Misinformation in climate science
Implications of “false balance”
Communicating science under adversity

5. “Post-Fact” World—“Post-Truth” Politics
“post-fact” “post-truth”
Number of media hits
“post-truth”
Word of the year 2016 (Oxford Dictionaries)

6. U.S. Presidential Candidates

7. Do Facts Matter? (Swire, Berinsky, Lewandowsky, & Ecker, 2017)
Present online sample (MTurk workers) with Trump statements
true or false
attributed to Trump or unattributed
obtain belief ratings
Donald Trump said that vaccines cause autism (MISINFORMATION)
Donald Trump said that the US spent $2 trillion on the war in Iraq (FACT)

8. Do Facts Matter? (Swire, Berinsky, Lewandowsky, & Ecker, 2017)
Present online sample (MTurk workers) with Trump statements
true or false
attributed to Trump or unattributed
obtain belief ratings
Rebut (affirm) false (true) statements
ask for belief ratings immediately or week later
Donald Trump said that vaccines cause autism (MISINFORMATION)
Donald Trump said that the US spent $2 trillion on the war in Iraq (FACT)

9. Belief Ratings (Swire et al., 2017)

10. Voting Intentions (Swire et al., 2017)

11. Voting Intentions (Swire et al., 2016)
Degree of belief change after correction of misinformation did not correlate with change in voting intentions
Effect has been replicated with different methodology (Nyhan et al., 2017)

12. Facts Don’t Matter: Now What?

13. Today The “post-truth” world: Do facts matter?
The crucible of the post-truth world: climate change
Misinformation in climate science
Implications of “false balance”
Communicating science under adversity

14. The Problem
 1C
Global Temperature

15. 97.1% 97.5% Scientific Consensus The climate is changing.
Humans are causing it.
It’s a problem.
97.1%
agreement in climate literature
97.5%
agreement among climate scientists
Various sources eg Cook et al 2013

16. Consensus on Consensus

17. Expertise and Consensus

18. Deference to Consensus can be Epistemically Justified (Miller, 2013)
Social calibration
all parties to consensus committed to same evidential standards and formalisms
Concilience of evidence
variety of lines of evidence that converge on same conclusion
Social diversity
consensus is socially diverse

19. Deference to Consensus can be Epistemically Justified (Miller, 2013)
Social calibration
all parties to consensus committed to same evidential standards and formalisms
Concilience of evidence
variety of lines of evidence that converge on same conclusion
Social diversity
consensus is socially diverse
Commitment to scientific method and norms shared by scientists
Many independent lines of evidence:
Global temperatures
Sea level rise
Cryosphere mass loss
Biological markers
Consensus endorsed by virtually all scientific institutions in the world

20. Notwithstanding the Consensus
“With all the hysteria, all the fear, all the phony science, could it be
that manmade global warming is
the greatest hoax ever perpetrated
on the American people?
I believe it is.”
—U.S. Senator James Inhofe Congressional Record, 2003
Oklahoma State Capitol

21. Oklahoma State Capitol

22. Today The “post-truth” world: Do facts matter?
The crucible of the post-truth world: climate change
Misinformation in climate science
Implications of “false balance”
Communicating science under adversity

26. “… official climate models got their predictions so hopelessly wrong …
“… official climate models got their predictions so hopelessly wrong …. [in 2007] none of them predicted a temporary fall in global temperatures of 0.7 degrees, equal to their entire net rise in the 20th century…”
Christopher Booker, 22 October 2016

27. “fall of 0.7 degrees”
0.7C

28. January 2007 – January 2008

30. Sea Level Rise

31. Blind Test With Economists and Statisticians
6 different scenarios involving various climate indicators
contrarian statements sampled from media and online sources
Google search reveals high prevalence on contrarian blogs
Hence statements not cherry-picked
mainstream scientific statements checked by climate experts
Lewandowsky, Ballard, Oberauer, & Benestad (2016).

32. Sample Trial

33. Combine items into correctness score

34. Statisticians

35. The Public is Denied the Right to be Adequately Informed about Risks
Misleading contrarian interpretations reduce people’s acceptance of climate science (Ranney & Clark, 2016; McCright et al., 2016)

36. Rhetorical Symmetry Does Not Imply Substantive Symmetry
Not all opinions deserve to be balanced
No, you are not entitled to your opinion….
…. unless it is supported by fact, evidence, or argument

37. Today The “post-truth” world: Do facts matter?
The crucible of the post-truth world: climate change
Misinformation in climate science
Implications of “false balance”
Communicating science under adversity

38. False Media Balance
(nearly 1,000 media articles; Brüggemann & Engesser, 2017)

39. Australia’s Channel 7 Sunrise (January 2011)
Two ‘experts’ being interviewed on global warming

40. NZ ‘Weather Expert,’ Mr. Ken Ring
Author of: Pawmistry: How to Read your Cats’ Paws
Cats have seven different types of paw and those bearing the “Earth Paw” are courageous, spontaneous and should not be cornered because they become “disorientated and confused.”

41. Balance Matters Even When Consensus is Known (Koehler, 2016)
High consensus

42. Results (Koehler, 2016)

43. Public Perception of Consensus
U.S. Data
“Balance as bias” media coverage

44. Knowledge of Consensus is “Gateway Belief”

45. Today The “post-truth” world: Do facts matter?
The crucible of the post-truth world: climate change
Misinformation in climate science
Implications of “false balance”
Communicating science under adversity

46. Suspicion and Inoculation
Research shows that correction is effective if people are:
provided with an alternative
skeptical of a source
suspicious of motives underlying initial information
Research shows that misinformation finds less traction
if people are warned or inoculated

47. Inoculation (Cook, Lewandowsky, & Ecker, 2017)
97.1%
agreement in climate literature
97.5%
agreement among climate scientists
Information about the tobacco industry’s use of “fake experts” to generate appearance of a debate when there was none

48. Inoculation (Cook, Lewandowsky, & Ecker, 2017)
Inoculation messages neutralized effects of ‘false balance’

49. Exposing Climate Denial
Rhetorical techniques (today)
judged to be misleading in blind test
Merchants of Doubt (Oreskes)
similarity to tobacco
“Cool dudes” (Dunlap, McCright)
ideological motivation
Conservative “think” tanks (Jacques, Dunlap).
92% of “skeptical” books have think tank background
Psychological variables (Lewandowsky)
conspiratorial thinking and incoherent reasoning

50. Summary of Interventions

51. Thank You http://www.bristol.ac.uk/posttruthexperts/

52. END HERE

53. Asymmetric Decline in Trust in Science (Gauchat, 2012)

54. Asymmetric Attitudes to Science
In laboratory experiments with synthetic scenarios:
no clear cognitive differences between people with different worldviews or political leanings
In surveys involving actual scientific issues:
rejection seems centered on political right
no evidence of symmetry
no evidence of science rejection by political left
Vaccinations (Hamilton, Lewandowsky)
Genetically Modified Organisms (Lewandowsky, Hamilton)
HIV-AIDS (Lewandowsky)
Tobacco-lung cancer (Lewandowsky)

55. Worldview and Science (e.g., Lewandowsky et al., 2013)
C:\Users\Lewan\Documents\MATLAB\Teaching of MatLab\ESCOPSS2010\Demos SL\plotrwithinbounds.m

56. Alternative Realities