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Nudging accurate scientific communication

The recent replicability crisis in social and biomedical sciences has highlighted the need for improvement in the honest transmission of scientific content. We present the results of two studies investigating whether nudges and soft social incentives enhance participants’ readiness to transmit high-...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Allard, Aurélien, Clavien, Christine
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10470889/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37651386
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290225
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author Allard, Aurélien
Clavien, Christine
author_facet Allard, Aurélien
Clavien, Christine
author_sort Allard, Aurélien
collection PubMed
description The recent replicability crisis in social and biomedical sciences has highlighted the need for improvement in the honest transmission of scientific content. We present the results of two studies investigating whether nudges and soft social incentives enhance participants’ readiness to transmit high-quality scientific news. In two online randomized experiments (Total N = 2425), participants had to imagine that they were science journalists who had to select scientific studies to report in their next article. They had to choose between studies reporting opposite results (for instance, confirming versus not confirming the effect of a treatment) and varying in traditional signs of research credibility (large versus small sample sizes, randomized versus non-randomized designs). In order to steer participants’ choices towards or against the trustworthy transmission of science, we used several soft framing nudges and social incentives. Overall, we find that, although participants show a strong preference for studies using high-sample sizes and randomized design, they are biased towards positive results, and express a preference for results in line with previous intuitions (evincing confirmation bias). Our soft framing nudges and social incentives did not help to counteract these biases. On the contrary, the social incentives against honest transmission of scientific content mildly exacerbated the expression of these biases.
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spelling pubmed-104708892023-09-01 Nudging accurate scientific communication Allard, Aurélien Clavien, Christine PLoS One Research Article The recent replicability crisis in social and biomedical sciences has highlighted the need for improvement in the honest transmission of scientific content. We present the results of two studies investigating whether nudges and soft social incentives enhance participants’ readiness to transmit high-quality scientific news. In two online randomized experiments (Total N = 2425), participants had to imagine that they were science journalists who had to select scientific studies to report in their next article. They had to choose between studies reporting opposite results (for instance, confirming versus not confirming the effect of a treatment) and varying in traditional signs of research credibility (large versus small sample sizes, randomized versus non-randomized designs). In order to steer participants’ choices towards or against the trustworthy transmission of science, we used several soft framing nudges and social incentives. Overall, we find that, although participants show a strong preference for studies using high-sample sizes and randomized design, they are biased towards positive results, and express a preference for results in line with previous intuitions (evincing confirmation bias). Our soft framing nudges and social incentives did not help to counteract these biases. On the contrary, the social incentives against honest transmission of scientific content mildly exacerbated the expression of these biases. Public Library of Science 2023-08-31 /pmc/articles/PMC10470889/ /pubmed/37651386 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290225 Text en © 2023 Allard, Clavien https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Allard, Aurélien
Clavien, Christine
Nudging accurate scientific communication
title Nudging accurate scientific communication
title_full Nudging accurate scientific communication
title_fullStr Nudging accurate scientific communication
title_full_unstemmed Nudging accurate scientific communication
title_short Nudging accurate scientific communication
title_sort nudging accurate scientific communication
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10470889/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37651386
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290225
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