Framing the Origins of Covid-19

Conspiracy theories have flourished about the origins of a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes an acute respiratory syndrome (COVID-19) in humans. This paper reports the results from a study that evaluates the impact of exposure to framed messages about the origins of Covid-19. We tested four hypotheses: two focusing on its origins as either zoonotic or human-engineered, and two concerning the impacts of origin beliefs on the desire to penalize China or support increased funding for biomedical research. The results accentuate the importance of finding ways to combat the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories related to this global pandemic

The Impact of Message Source on the Effectiveness of Communications About Climate Change

We conducted a survey experiment in which we presented 1,850 respondents with one of two versions of an appeal emphasizing either the threats to the environment or threats to national security of the United States as a result of climate change. The messages were attributed to one of four sources: Republican Party leaders, Democratic Party leaders, military officials, or climate scientists. The results reveal that messages attributed to military leaders, or to Republican Party leaders, can enhance the impact of the appeal. This finding underscores the importance that the source of any communication can have on its overall effectiveness

“Don’t Tell Me What to Do”: Resistance to Climate Change Messages Suggesting Behavior Changes

This study evaluates the impact of exposure to messages that emphasize the need for changes in individual behavior or in public policy to address climate change attributed to a “climate scientist” or to an unnamed source. We implemented a large survey experiment (N = 1915) online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform that manipulated the presence of recommendations for voluntary behavioral changes or the adoption of new laws to mitigate climate change. We found that, regardless of the source of the information, recommendations for behavioral changes decreased individuals’ willingness to take personal actions to reduce greenhouse gases, decreased willingness to support proclimate candidates, reduced belief in the accelerated speed of climate change, and decreased trust in climate scientists

How Negative Frames Can Undermine Public Support for Studying Solar Geoengineering in the U.S.

Scientists and policymakers have become interested in the viability of solar geoengineering as a way to manipulate the Earth’s temperature in the face of unabated global warming. This paper reports the results from a survey experiment designed to test predictions about the effects of exposure to framed messages about basic scientific research on solar geoengineering. Our findings reinforce other survey research showing that solar geoengineering is a generally unfamiliar concept, but also show that this topic has not yet become politicized. In addition, despite treatments of equal valence, we find that negative information can exert a more powerful influence than positive information on support for establishing a research program to study solar geoengineering. The results have implications for understanding how framing can influence public support for research on new technologies to mitigate climate chang

Counteracting Climate Science Politicization With Effective Frames and Imagery

Politicization of science occurs when the inherent uncertainty of science is emphasized to cast doubt on scientific consensus. Climate change has become particularly susceptible to this kind of politicization. In this article, we report the results of a survey experiment in which we manipulated text frames and visual imagery associated with two types of environmental hazards linked to climate change—sea level rise with associated flooding and increased heat levels with associated drought and wildfires. We present evidence that the use of visual imagery can counter the effects that science politicization has on climate change beliefs and behaviors

An objective and subjective comparison of Clear Care versus various multipurpose solutions

In this study funded by Ciba Vision, Ciba\u27s Clear Care one-step hydrogen peroxide solution was objectively and subjectively compared to various multipurpose solutions. Twenty-three soft contact lens wearers with various habitual multipurpose solutions (Optifree=5, Complete=6, Renu=ll, Solocare=l) were assigned to either their own solution or the Clear Care solution for disinfection and storage of their lenses for two-week phases. A seven day wash-out period without lens wear was completed before each phase to eliminate any corneal staining. At the initial, one-week, and two-week visits, subjects were asked to complete a subjective questionnaire, visual acuity with contact lenses was recorded, and a detailed slit lamp examination of external ocular health was performed. The depth, area and type of any corneal staining was determined by fluorescein staining and documented using a five region template. Clear Care was statistically found (p\u3c0.001) to provide better overall comfort and vision, and reduced symptoms of dryness to a greater extent than various multipurpose solutions. The depth of corneal staining was consistently found to be superficial and Clear Care was found to have a smaller average area and lesser average type of corneal staining after a two-week period as compared to multipurpose solutions. This study showed that Clear Care is an excellent alternative to multipurpose solutions

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Perspectives of Southwest Florida Homeowners and Real Estate Agents before Hurricane Ian

In September 2022, Hurricane Ian made landfall in southwest Florida, causing an estimated $67 billion in damage and the loss of almost 150 lives. Before this date, demand and house prices in this area were rising faster than anywhere else in the country. What did homeowners in southwest Florida believe about flood risk to their own homes, and what did real estate agents believe about the role of flood risk in the residential housing market? The survey research summarized in this article shows that not only did residents feel that they were not particularly at risk from flooding, but also that damaging floods would not affect future home values in their neighborhoods or for their own homes. We found that political party affiliation was strongly correlated with the direction and strength of these beliefs. Real estate agents also reported strong demand for low-elevation coastal housing, noting that coastal lifestyle outweighed the prospect of flooding in residential decision-making. They also observed that the detailed maps of flood risk that are now available at realtor.com for anyone browsing for houses for sale had no effect on homebuyers, and that most of their customers were generally unconcerned with flood risk

Effects of Conspiracy Rhetoric on Views About the Consequences of Climate Change and Support for Direct Carbon Capture

We implemented two survey-experiments to test the impact of conspiracy rhetoric on the views of US residents about the consequences of climate change and support for direct carbon capture. The first study focused on how receptive respondents were to a scientific report on the impacts of climate change when they were also presented with conspiracy-based criticism of the report’s conclusions. The second study explored how conspiracy rhetoric criticizing a report recommending the consideration of direct carbon capture influences support for the technology. We assess the effects of exposure to the conspiracy claims both in isolation and in contexts where scientific evidence contradicts the conspiratorial attack. We include a partisan source cue to test whether its presence enhances the impact of the messages on in-group partisans. The results accentuate the conditional nature of conspiracy rhetoric on views about the consequences of climate change and support for a novel climate geoengineering technology

Public Response to Solar Geoengineering: How Media Frames About Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Affect Opinions

Global air temperatures continue to rise despite efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Supplementary technological interventions may become necessary to avoid harmful consequences resulting from unabated temperature increases. One such intervention involves the artificial reduction of incoming solar radiation through the release of reflective particles into the stratosphere: stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). The American public is generally unfamiliar with SAI, despite increasing media coverage. We conducted a content analysis of frames in US news focused on SAI between 2014 and 2022 to identify and catalogue the most prominent dimensions that are employed in news coverage. We then use these dimensions to design a two-wave survey experiment evaluating how combinations of positive and negative frames that appear in recent journalistic accounts affect the American public’s beliefs about SAI and support for research. The results demonstrate how exposure to framed communications can exert a powerful and durable impact on the public’s beliefs and general support for SAI