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. 2017 May 5;12(5):e0175799.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0175799. eCollection 2017.

Neutralizing misinformation through inoculation: Exposing misleading argumentation techniques reduces their influence

John Cook  1   2 , Stephan Lewandowsky  2   3 , Ullrich K H Ecker  2
Affiliations

Neutralizing misinformation through inoculation: Exposing misleading argumentation techniques reduces their influence

John Cook et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Misinformation can undermine a well-functioning democracy. For example, public misconceptions about climate change can lead to lowered acceptance of the reality of climate change and lowered support for mitigation policies. This study experimentally explored the impact of misinformation about climate change and tested several pre-emptive interventions designed to reduce the influence of misinformation. We found that false-balance media coverage (giving contrarian views equal voice with climate scientists) lowered perceived consensus overall, although the effect was greater among free-market supporters. Likewise, misinformation that confuses people about the level of scientific agreement regarding anthropogenic global warming (AGW) had a polarizing effect, with free-market supporters reducing their acceptance of AGW and those with low free-market support increasing their acceptance of AGW. However, we found that inoculating messages that (1) explain the flawed argumentation technique used in the misinformation or that (2) highlight the scientific consensus on climate change were effective in neutralizing those adverse effects of misinformation. We recommend that climate communication messages should take into account ways in which scientific content can be distorted, and include pre-emptive inoculation messages.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Predicted response in Experiment 1 from linear regression of observed data.
Blue solid line with triangles represents control group, red dotted line with circles represents group receiving misinformation only, green dashed line with squares represents group receiving inoculation before misinformation, purple dot-dashed line with crosses represents group receiving consensus information before misinformation, orange dotted line with diamonds represent group receiving consensus plus inoculation information before misinformation. Horizontal axis represents free-market support where 5 corresponds to strong agreement with unregulated markets. (a) Perceived scientific consensus on AGW. (b) AGW acceptance. (c) Attribution of human activity to climate trends. (d) Policy support. (e) Trust in climate scientists. (f) Trust in contrarian scientists.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Predicted response in Experiment 2 from linear regression of observed data.
Blue dashed line with triangles represents control group, red solid line with circles represents group receiving misinformation-only intervention, purple dotted line with diamonds represents group receiving inoculation-only intervention, green dot-dashed line with squares represents group receiving inoculation plus misinformation. Horizontal axis represents free-market support where 1 corresponds to strong disagreement with unregulated markets and 5 corresponds to strong agreement with unregulated markets. (a) Perceived scientific consensus on AGW. (b) Acceptance of AGW. (c) Attribution of human activity to global warming trends. (d) Support for climate policy.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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