🧵. Here is a new open access article in Current Opinion in Psychology, authored by me and @UlliEcker, @johnfocook, @NaomiOreskes, @Sander_vdLinden, and @roozenbot. 1/n
sciencedirect.com/science/articl… @UlliEcker @johnfocook @NaomiOreskes @Sander_vdLinden @roozenbot We consider the effect of misinformation on the epistemic integrity of democracy. We argue that democracy relies on the public agreeing on a body of reliable knowledge and information, two of which are particularly important: 2/n

🧵 Matt Hornsey and I just published a paper in Nature Human Behaviour entitled “A toolkit for understanding and addressing climate scepticism” dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41562…

1/n Some highlights: we structure the article around the interplay between individual-level factors, such as personal circumstances or worldviews, and “collective-level” drivers of (organized) climate denial through the usual “think tanks” and so on.
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🧵 Why does group discussion lead to polarization? Why do people prefer to pay selective attention to opinions similar to their own? Why does exposure to neutral or even contradictory evidence sometimes strengthen pre-existing opinions? 1/n We tackled those questions in a recent article in Psychological Review doi.org/10.1037/rev000… : Gordon Brown and Zhihong Huang (Uni Warwick) and I present a computational theory of attitude expression… 2/n

Leak or leap? @stuartjdneil @past_is_future and I published an article in @sciam a few days ago in which we examined the controversy surrounding the origin of SARS-Cov2 scientificamerican.com/article/the-la…
1/n @stuartjdneil @past_is_future @sciam We highlighted how scientific evidence could adjudicate between the two competing hypotheses, namely a leap from another species to humans vs. a leak from a virology lab in Wuhan. 2/n

A thread about how the emanations of querulous quacks can set the media agenda, and how they can launch antivax nonsense into the global public, and can force a major German broadcaster (ARD) to debunk their nonsense
@annettedittert @SciBeh 1/n @annettedittert @SciBeh It all started when I encountered the debunking of a myth about vaccines causing heart attacks (in German) this morning: tagesschau.de/faktenfinder/m… 2/n

Pope Francis recently tweeted about how technology companies prey on human weaknesses

https://twitter.com/Pontifex/status/1449406279047213059

. This is not the only time the Pope has weighed in recently on the "post-truth" world. 1/n Here is another report of the Pope taking a stance on "post-truth" ncronline.org/news/opinion/p… 2/n

Major update to the wiki underlying our COVID-19 Vaccination Communication Handbook sks.to/c19vax 1/n The latest on vaccine mandates on our page at c19vax.scibeh.org/pages/vaxmanda…

Updates to the issue of risk perception at c19vax.scibeh.org/pages/riskperc…

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New paper with Klaus Oberauer just out in Cognition that tackles the reasons for the pervasive political asymmetry in rejection of science. dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogn… . It's easy to see why conservative deny climate change --because it upsets biz as usual. But why vaccinations? 1/n Why are conservatives more opposed to vaccinations than liberals? This has shown up strikingly with COVID-19 vax and red v blue state differences: nytimes.com/interactive/20…

And why do conservatives trust scientists less about nuclear power than liberals as @ichiloe has shown? 2/n

The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook: A practical guide for improving vaccine communication & fighting misinformation

sks.to/c19vax

Our new handbook (PDF+living wiki), which helps fighting the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. #c19vaxwiki 1/n This handbook is for journalists, doctors, nurses, policy makers, researchers, teachers, students, parents & more. It’s for everyone who wants to know more about COVID-19 vaccines, how to talk to others about them & how to challenge misinformation about the vaccines. #c19vaxwiki

How to talk to someone about misinformation and conspiracy theories? Lots of resources now available: First there is the new in-depth Debunking Handbook sks.to/db2020 ... 1/n Then there is the Conspiracy Handbook here with in-depth information: sks.to/conspiracy. But now there is a new product, with hints and tips ...

"Live" update of analysis of 2K UK respondents and their views on privacy-encroaching tracking policies: stephanlewandowsky.github.io/UKsocialLicenc…
This page will change as more analyses are added. Links to project description and preregistration and data at the same link. 1/n This page will update periodically (slower than I had hoped but... workload). For discussion of project and suggestions: reddit.com/r/BehSciResear… @SciBeh @stefanmherzog @sTeamTraen @nicholaraihani @philipplenz6 @AnaSKozyreva @EJWagenmakers @VandekerckhoveJ

THREAD: The model that influenced UK government policy imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial… is now being critiqued after the UK government’s U-turn and acknowledgement that their initial policy might have caused up to 250,000 excess deaths.
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https://twitter.com/hancocktom/status/1239672456073404416

What follows from this? It does not follow that those scientists, or models generally, should be condemned or ridiculed. The scientists did their best under extremely difficult circumstances. No one approaches corona flippantly.
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THREAD:
I asked three questions yesterday about the UK covid policy, which left me puzzled:

https://twitter.com/STWorg/status/1238486902166237184

1/n Apparently I was not the only behavioural scientist puzzled by this. Today a letter by scientists that questions the government’s approach and is asking for that “behavioural” evidence to be released, has attracted >100 signatures from UK academics sites.google.com/view/covidopen…

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