A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine provides a comprehensive assessment of the literature on science misinformation, its origins and impact, and strategies for mitigating its spread and potential harms.
While misinformation about science can originate from wide-ranging sources – such as corporations, governments and politicians, alternative health and science industries, entertainment media, news media, nongovernmental organizations, science organizations, individual scientists and medical professionals, and ordinary citizens – its influence varies, says the report. For example, science misinformation is more influential when it reaches large audiences, such as on search engines and social media. The report says search engines and social media platforms should foreground evidence-based science information that is clear and easy to understand for different audiences, working closely with nonprofit, nonpartisan professional science societies and organizations to identify such information.
To provide clarity and to focus its analysis, the committee that wrote the report defined misinformation about science as “information that asserts or implies claims that are inconsistent with the weight of accepted scientific evidence at the time (reflecting both quality and quantity of evidence).” Claims that are determined to be misinformation about science can evolve over time as new evidence accumulates and scientific knowledge advances. Moreover, the committee considered disinformation about science to be a subcategory of misinformation that is spread by agents who are aware they are circulating false information.
Over the last decade, concerns about the spread of misinformation about science and the role of scientific expertise in civic dialogue have grown significantly. The committee’s review of the evidence found that misinformation can lead people to hold misbeliefs with potentially negative consequences such as ill-informed personal choices for themselves or their communities; exacerbate existing harms within historically marginalized communities; distort public opinion in ways that limit productive debate on dealing with natural disasters and public health emergencies; and diminish trust in institutions, which is important to a healthy democracy.
“The evidence is clear that exposure to misinformation about science may lead to misbeliefs which, in turn, have the potential for causing harm at the individual and collective levels,” said committee chair K. “Vish” Viswanath, Lee Kum Kee Professor of Health Communication in the department of social and behavioural sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and in the McGraw-Patterson Center for Population Sciences at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
