IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/osfxxx/3cpvs.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Let’s Do Better: Public Representations of COVID-19 Science

Author

Listed:
  • , AISDL

Abstract

COVID science is being both done and circulated at a furious pace. While it is inspiring to see the research community responding so vigorously to the pandemic crisis, all this activity has also created a churning sea of bad data, conflicting results, and exaggerated headlines. With representations of science becoming increasingly polarized, twisted and hyped, there is growing concern that the relevant science is being represented to the public in a manner that may cause confusion, inappropriate expectations, and the erosion of public trust. Here we explore some of the key issues associated with the representations of science in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these issues are not new. But the COVID-19 pandemic has placed a spotlight on the biomedical research process and amplified the adverse ramifications of poor public communication. We need to do better. As such, we conclude with ten recommendations aimed at key actors involved in the communication of COVID-19 science, including government, funders, universities, publishers, media and the research communities.

Suggested Citation

  • , Aisdl, 2020. "Let’s Do Better: Public Representations of COVID-19 Science," OSF Preprints 3cpvs, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:3cpvs
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/3cpvs
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/5fc63410aa60b8004a8945bd/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/3cpvs?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alessandro Lovari, 2020. "Spreading (Dis)Trust: Covid-19 Misinformation and Government Intervention in Italy," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 8(2), pages 458-461.
    2. Barry Eichengreen & Orkun Saka & Cevat Giray Aksoy, 2024. "The Political Scar of Epidemics," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(660), pages 1683-1700.
    3. Chris Woolston, 2014. "Study points to press releases as sources of hype," Nature, Nature, vol. 516(7531), pages 291-291, December.
    4. Adam Palayew & Ole Norgaard & Kelly Safreed-Harmon & Tue Helms Andersen & Lauge Neimann Rasmussen & Jeffrey V. Lazarus, 2020. "Pandemic publishing poses a new COVID-19 challenge," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(7), pages 666-669, July.
    5. Quan-Hoang Vuong, 2020. "Reform retractions to make them more transparent," Nature, Nature, vol. 582(7811), pages 149-149, June.
    6. Lei Zhang & Yusha Tao & Mingwang Shen & Christopher K Fairley & Yuming Guo, 2020. "Can self-imposed prevention measures mitigate the COVID-19 epidemic?," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(7), pages 1-4, July.
    7. Dominic H. P. Balog-Way & Katherine A. McComas, 2020. "COVID-19: Reflections on trust, tradeoffs, and preparedness," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(7-8), pages 838-848, August.
    8. Bargain, Olivier & Aminjonov, Ulugbek, 2020. "Trust and compliance to public health policies in times of COVID-19," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    9. Mark Yarborough, 2014. "Openness in science is key to keeping public trust," Nature, Nature, vol. 515(7527), pages 313-313, November.
    10. repec:zbw:bofitp:2020_014 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Heidi Ledford, 2020. "Chloroquine hype is derailing the search for coronavirus treatments," Nature, Nature, vol. 580(7805), pages 573-573, April.
    12. Ann Finkbeiner, 2018. "The covert politics of cold-war science," Nature, Nature, vol. 563(7729), pages 32-33, November.
    13. Nicola Di Girolamo & Reint Meursinge Reynders, 2020. "Characteristics of scientific articles on COVID-19 published during the initial 3 months of the pandemic," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(1), pages 795-812, October.
    14. Amélie Yavchitz & Isabelle Boutron & Aida Bafeta & Ibrahim Marroun & Pierre Charles & Jean Mantz & Philippe Ravaud, 2012. "Misrepresentation of Randomized Controlled Trials in Press Releases and News Coverage: A Cohort Study," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(9), pages 1-11, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cappelen, Alexander W. & Falch, Ranveig & Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2021. "Solidarity and fairness in times of crisis," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 1-11.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liu, Ning & Bao, Guoxian & Wu, Shaolong, 2023. "Social implications of Covid-19: Its impact on general trust, political trust, and trust in physicians in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 317(C).
    2. Monica Martinez-Bravo & Carlos Sanz, 2022. "The Management of the Pandemic and its Effects on Trust and Accountability," Working Papers wp2022_2207, CEMFI.
    3. Yuen, Vera W.H., 2023. "The efficacy of health experts’ communication in inducing support for COVID-19 measures and effect on trustworthiness: A survey in Hong Kong," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 317(C).
    4. Fazio, Andrea & Reggiani, Tommaso & Sabatini, Fabio, 2022. "The political cost of sanctions: Evidence from COVID-19," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(9), pages 872-878.
    5. Aksoy Cevat Giray & Antonio Cabrales & Mathias Dolls & Windsteiger Lisa, 2020. "COVID-19, Trust and Solidarity in the EU," EconPol Policy Reports 27, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    6. Cristina Bicchieri & Enrique Fatas & Abraham Aldama & Andrés Casas & Ishwari Deshpande & Mariagiulia Lauro & Cristina Parilli & Max Spohn & Paula Pereira & Ruiling Wen, 2021. "In science we (should) trust: Expectations and compliance across nine countries during the COVID-19 pandemic," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(6), pages 1-17, June.
    7. Trenton Taros & Christopher Zoppo & Nathan Yee & Jack Hanna & Christine MacGinnis, 2023. "Retracted Covid-19 articles: significantly more cited than other articles within their journal of origin," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(5), pages 2935-2943, May.
    8. Abel Brodeur & David Gray & Anik Islam & Suraiya Bhuiyan, 2021. "A literature review of the economics of COVID‐19," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1007-1044, September.
    9. Blayac, Thierry & Dubois, Dimitri & Duchêne, Sébastien & Nguyen-Van, Phu & Ventelou, Bruno & Willinger, Marc, 2022. "What drives the acceptability of restrictive health policies: An experimental assessment of individual preferences for anti-COVID 19 strategies," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    10. Fazio, Andrea & Reggiani, Tommaso G. & Sabatini, Fabio, 2021. "The Political Cost of Lockdown's Enforcement," IZA Discussion Papers 14032, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Shockey, James W, 2021. "Social Aspects of COVID Mitigation," SocArXiv sgjvp, Center for Open Science.
    12. Paolo Nicola Barbieri & Beatrice Bonini, 2021. "Political orientation and adherence to social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(2), pages 483-504, July.
    13. Quan-Hoang Vuong & Huyen Thanh T. Nguyen & Thanh-Hang Pham & Manh-Toan Ho & Minh-Hoang Nguyen, 2021. "Assessing the ideological homogeneity in entrepreneurial finance research by highly cited publications," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-11, December.
    14. Nguyen, Minh-Hoang, 2020. "Book Review of Alexandros Gasparatos and Katherine J. Willis. Biodiversity in the Green Economy. London and New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2015. Version 1," OSF Preprints 3xhrg, Center for Open Science.
    15. Nguyen, Minh-Hoang & Vuong, Quan-Hoang, 2020. "The third finding concerning a missing cultural value: a bibliometric analysis using the Web of Science," OSF Preprints jbcx3, Center for Open Science.
    16. Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Neeraj Kaushal & Ashley N. Muchow, 2021. "Timing of social distancing policies and COVID-19 mortality: county-level evidence from the U.S," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(4), pages 1445-1472, October.
    17. Francesco Sarracino & Kelsey J. O’Connor, 2023. "Neo-humanism and COVID-19: Opportunities for a socially and environmentally sustainable world," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 9-41, February.
    18. Arda Gitmez & Konstantine Sonin & Austin L. Wright, 2020. "Political Economy of Crisis Response," Working Papers 2020-68, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    19. Lu Wei & Tien-Tsung Lee, 2021. "Who Can I Trust in a Scary World? An Examination of the Objects of Trust, Information Sources and Social Distancing Intention Amid COVID-19," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(10), pages 1-16, May.
    20. Gebka, Bartosz & Kanungo, Rama Prasad & Wildman, John, 2024. "The transition from COVID-19 infections to deaths: Do governance quality and corruption affect it?," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 235-253.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:3cpvs. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://osf.io/preprints/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.