Research by Professors Kevin Young and Bernhard Leidner Featured in “The Conversation”
Professors Kevin Young and Ben Leidner and PhD Student Stylianos Syropoulos were recently featured in The Conversation with their piece, “When scientific journals take sides during an election, the public’s trust in science takes a hit.” The article assesses whether endorsement of now-President Joe Biden by scientific journals, such as Nature and Scientific American influenced attitudes towards science. The authors ran an online survey experiment, finding that trust in science declined when respondents learned about partisan endorsements, particularly among conservatives. As the authors write, these findings “suggest there may be costs when scientific institutions take partisan stances on electoral politics.”