Seth Rosenthal

Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change

Effectively addressing climate change requires significant changes in individual and collective human behavior and decision‐making. Yet, in light of the increasing politicization of (climate) science, and the attempts of vested‐interest groups to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change through organized “disinformation campaigns,” identifying ways to effectively engage with the public about the issue across the political spectrum has proven difficult. A growing body of research suggests that one promising way to counteract the politicization of science is to convey the high level of normative agreement (“consensus”) among experts about the reality of human‐caused climate change. Yet, much prior research examining public opinion dynamics in the context of climate change has done so under conditions with limited external validity. Moreover, no research to date has examined how to protect the public from the spread of influential misinformation about climate change. The current research bridges this divide by exploring how people evaluate and process consensus cues in a polarized information environment. Furthermore, evidence is provided that it is possible to pre‐emptively protect (“inoculate”) public attitudes about climate change against real‐world misinformation.

Long-Term Research in Ecology and Evolution (LTREE): 2015 survey data

To systematically assess views on contributions and future activities for long-term research in ecology and evolution (LTREE), we conducted and here provide data responses and associated metadata for a survey of ecological and evolutionary scientists. The survey objectives were to: (1) Identify and prioritize research questions that are important to address through long-term, ecological field experiments; and (2) understand the role that these experiments might play in generating and applying ecological and evolutionary knowledge. The survey was developed adhering to the standards of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. It was administered online using Qualtrics Survey Software. Survey creation was a multi-step process, with questions and format developed and then revised with, for example, input from an external advisory committee comprising senior and junior ecological and evolutionary researchers. The final questionnaire was released to ~100 colleagues to ensure functionality and then fielded 2 d later (January 7th , 2015). Two professional societies distributed it to their membership, including the Ecological Society of America, and it was posted to three list serves. The questionnaire was available through February 8th 2015 and completed by 1,179 respondents. The distribution approach targeted practicing ecologists and evolutionary biologists in the U.S. Quantitative (both ordinal and categorical) closed-ended questions used a predefined set of response categories, facilitating direct comparison across all respondents. Qualitative, open-ended questions, provided respondents the opportunity to develop their own answers. We employed quantitative questions to score views on the extent to which long-term experimental research has contributed to understanding in ecology and evolutionary biology; its role compared to other approaches (e.g., short-term experiments); justifications for and caveats to long-term experiments; and the relative importance of incentives for conducting long-term research. Qualitative questions were used to assess community views on the most important topics and questions for long-term research to address, and primary incentives and challenges to realizing this work. Finally, demographic data were collected to determine if views were conditional on such things as years of experience and field of expertise. The final questionnaire and all responses are provided for unrestricted use.