Does 'When' really feel more certain than 'If'? Two failures to replicate Ballard and Lewandowsky (2015).

We report on two independent failures to conceptually replicate findings by Ballard & Lewandowsky (Ballard and Lewandowsky 2015 , 20140464 (doi:10.1098/rsta.2014.

Correction: Controversy matters: Impacts of topic and solution controversy on the perceived credibility of a scientist who advocates.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Correction: Controversy matters: Impacts of topic and solution controversy on the perceived credibility of a scientist who advocates.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Controversy matters: Impacts of topic and solution controversy on the perceived credibility of a scientist who advocates.

In this article, we focus on the potential influence of a scientist's advocacy position on the public's perceived credibility of scientists as a whole. Further, we examine how the scientist's solution position (information only, non-controversial, and controversial) affects the public's perception of the scientist's motivation for sharing information about specific issues (flu, marijuana, climate change, severe weather). Finally, we assess how perceived motivations mediate the relationship between solution position and credibility.

Exposure to the Pope's Climate Change Message Activated Convinced Americans to Take Certain Activism Actions.

Many people who are concerned about the issue of climate change do not engage in the collective action behaviors that are most likely to lead to societal-scale solutions. Such attitude-behavior inconsistency is a well-documented phenomenon. This study investigates whether exposure to an effectively framed message from a highly credible source can increase the consistency between attitudes and activism behaviors among people with pre-existing strong attitudes, particularly for behaviors that are less difficult.

Predictors of trust in the general science and climate science research of US federal agencies.

In this article, we focus on a key strategic objective of scientific organizations: maintaining the trust of the public. Using data from a nationally representative survey of American adults ( n = 1510), we assess the extent to which demographic factors and political ideology are associated with citizens' trust in general science and climate science research conducted by US federal agencies. Finally, we test whether priming individuals to first consider agencies' general science research influences trust in their climate science research, and vice versa.

Simple messages help set the record straight about scientific agreement on human-caused climate change: the results of two experiments.

Human-caused climate change is happening; nearly all climate scientists are convinced of this basic fact according to surveys of experts and reviews of the peer-reviewed literature. Yet, among the American public, there is widespread misunderstanding of this scientific consensus. In this paper, we report results from two experiments, conducted with national samples of American adults, that tested messages designed to convey the high level of agreement in the climate science community about human-caused climate change.

An attack on science? Media use, trust in scientists, and perceptions of global warming.

There is a growing divide in how conservatives and liberals in the USA understand the issue of global warming. Prior research suggests that the American public's reliance on partisan media contributes to this gap. However, researchers have yet to identify intervening variables to explain the relationship between media use and public opinion about global warming.

Fear and Anger Responses to Local News Coverage of Alcohol-Related Crimes, Accidents, and Injuries: Explaining News Effects on Policy Support Using a Representative Sample of Messages and People.

An experiment investigated emotional reactions to news on policy support. Stimuli were selected from a nationally representative sample of local crime/accident news, and a nationally representative online panel of U.S.