Political endorsements can affect scientific credibility

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20 March 2023 Political endorsements can affect scientific credibility In 2020, Nature endorsed Joe Biden in the US presidential election. A survey finds that viewing the endorsement did not change people’s views of the candidates, but caused some to lose confidence in Nature and in US scientists generally. Arthur Lupia 0 Arthur Lupia Arthur Lupia is in the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104, USA. View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

We live in an era in which there are many attempts to politicize science. Some scientists are concerned that such attempts will reduce both public confidence in science1 (see also go.nature.com/3tpscrs) and people’s willingness to rely on scientific information to manage challenges such as a pandemic. Nature was one of several prominent scientific publications to endorse Joe Biden in the 2020 US presidential election, adding a political element to a publication that derives its credibility from science. How did Nature’s endorsement affect people who viewed it? Writing in Nature Human Behaviour, Zhang2 describes an experiment that asks this question, revealing that some who saw the endorsement lost confidence in the journal as a result. This topic is important because, if people believe that political forces might introduce bias or inaccuracy into research claims, they might also think it is riskier for them to trust that research.

Nature 615, 590-591 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00799-3

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Competing Interests A.L. was an assistant director of the US National Science Foundation from September 2018 to January 2022.

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