🧵 Thread: Does the internet threaten democracy? I argue that it does in my latest piece in Science: doi.org/10.1126/scie... Here's the short version. 1/9 1/10

Do people really believe Canada has an army of genetically modified super-raccoons, or are they just trolling? 🍁🦝🪖 Our new article explores how “insincere” survey responses may inflate estimates of conspiracy belief. (1/x) @aunz.theconversation.com theconversation.com/conspiracy-t...

More than 400,000 New Zealanders have experienced Long Covid and nearly half are still symptomatic. Long Covid is a stark reminder of the pandemic’s persistence with real and ongoing health, social, and economic impacts. So where is the government response? www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/lon...

Survey research is often interpreted as showing that belief in conspiracy theories can be surprisingly widespread, including belief in conspiracy theories that would be astonishing if true. For example, in The Atlantic we learn that “12 million Americans believe lizard people run our country”

Social media giants found liable for harming a child – Expert Reaction www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2026/03/26/s...

Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Want to work at the interface of science and journalism - helping make complex topics accessible to the public of Aotearoa New Zealand? Then check out our new job opening here: www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2026/01/27/w...

Scientists who use AI published 3X more papers, received 5X times more citations, and reached leadership roles faster than their AI-free peers. But science as a whole is paying the price. AI-driven work circles the same crowded problems, are leads to a less interconnected scientific literature

Who is positive about precision health technologies? Demographic and psychological factors associated with science opposition Golley, @scicomguy.bsky.social, Walshe, & I examine the psychological / ideological antecedents of attitudes to precision health see here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Testing the socio-functional model: Does precarity cause conspiracy belief? TLDR; probably not huge thx: Antipodean Misinformation and Conspiracies Club @matthewmatix.bsky.social @lingtax.bsky.social @scicomguy.bsky.social @srhastraea.bsky.social @eddieclarke.bsky.social & students osf.io/nq3y7/

Awesome news @scicomguy.bsky.social !!!

What drives people's views on public health measures? I’ll be digging into this thanks to a Mana Tūānuku Research Leader Fellowship from the Royal Society Te Apārangi. Huge thanks to everyone who has backed me on this journey. I’m excited for what comes next www.royalsociety.org.nz/news/2025-ma...

Common left-right political scale masks anti-establishment views at the center

Rate your score on Factor Fexcectorn. Well done, Scientific Reports. pubpeer.com/publications...

@srhastraea.bsky.social is a humble & busy guy so the aussie will announce his successful #marsden Unpacking how we choose who to trust for knowledge in complex, contentious issues with the potential for misinformation @scicomguy.bsky.social @matthewmatix.bsky.social @rachelprozac.bsky.social

Extremely pleased to see this work published! Thank you so much to my excellent collaborators @fmsmallfield.bsky.social @scicomguy.bsky.social @srhastraea.bsky.social @lingtax.bsky.social @mdmarques.com @matthewmatix.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Published today: One of the biggest #science #communication studies to date. We asked 71,922 people in 68 countries how they #engage with information about #science and combined the data with several country-level factors: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #OpenAccess

tldr: we found very limited evidence for distress subsequently increasing belief in conspiracy theories using a longitudinal survey sampling participants 7 times over ~6 months - and no evidence for belief in conspiracy theories worsening distress over time

No access ⛔ New report documents the difficulty for researchers to get access to social media data. The access challenge has multiple effects, such as turning away from studying some platforms, redesigning studies, and fears of violating terms of service. www.digmin.dk/Media/638923...

This is a nice write-up of our recent paper by PsyPost, with clear info about limitations and small effect sizes. I would like to clarify that I am not in fact the person in the photo, though doi.org/10.1002/ejsp...

'A tendency to feel victimized predicts believing in conspiracies.' That’s the TL;DR from @marlephie.bsky.social’s great summary of new research below. Backed by a huge amount of work and international data. Grateful to have been part of this excellent study. 👍

haven't posted in a while, so here goes. recently had the opportunity to peer-review a thoughtful piece about autonomy and health-misinformation and #conspiracytheories (see here: linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii...) & write a commentary on it (see below or authors.elsevier.com/a/1lPXr2dv7n...)

Conspiracies emerge in the wake of high-profile events, but you can’t debunk them with evidence because little yet exists. Does this mean LLMs can’t debunk conspiracies during ongoing events? No! We show they can in a new working paper. PDF: osf.io/preprints/ps...

I had a great chat with @comingupcharlie.bsky.social about why some people reject germ theory in favour of alternative views like ‘terrain theory’, and make a brief appearance in this deep dive into the NZ influencers promoting these ideas. Well worth a read. 👇

Nice to see the work of the Science Media Centres highlighted by NBR review of Fox's book. But disagree with the reviewer on one point, NZ's @smcnz.bsky.social has in fact grown in scope and size, and is all the more important given fewer specialist reporters. www.nbr.co.nz/book-review/...

“There’s no money” isn’t economics, it’s accounting. A real Budget debate asks: are we investing our limited resources in what truly matters for future generations? #NZBudget #PublicHealth @ganeshahirao.bsky.social www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/soc...

Trust is a super power. Climate scientists are trusted globally, just not as much as other scientists. Check out this excellent summary of our latest research that explores the reasons why: theconversation.com/climate-scie... @mason4c.bsky.social @omidghasemi.bsky.social

We are delighted to share the publication of Risky Research: An AoIR Guide to Researcher Protection and Safety, the culmination of over two years of collaborative effort by the AoIR Risky Research Working Group. aoir.org/riskyresearc...

Here's a summary of what I think is in there too www.taiuru.co.nz/reo-maori-in...

Unfortunately paywalled but an important piece on Russian disinformation in te reo Māori. h/t @scicomguy.bsky.social www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/russian-d...

It's often claimed that developing a belief in one conspiracy theory will increase the chance that someone goes on to believe other conspiracy theories... perhaps leading them down a rabbit hole of conspiracist beliefs. But does that really happen? doi.org/10.1002/ejsp...

Does microtargeting work? The idea that people can be manipulated by political messages that are furtively tailored to their personality or other vulnerabilities has triggered much concern. But how well founded are those concerns? 1/n

🚨OpEd+data: Meta is out of step with public opinion🚨 Zuck cut moderation b/c he said people no longer want it. But he's wrong! We polled 1k Americans and most people, including majority of Reps: i) want content moderation ii) don't want Community Notes w/o fact-checkers thehill.com/opinion/tech...

The spread of misinformation and disinformation top the WEF short-term global risk report for 2025. www.weforum.org/publications...

New open-access paper in Annual Review of Psychology with @mjbsp.bsky.social: “Ideology: Psychological Similarities and Differences Across the Ideological Spectrum Reexamined” www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Now publicly available: the #TISP dataset. It contains 71,922 survey responses on public perceptions of science, science communication, and climate change attitudes in 68 countries. Published in @natureportfolio.bsky.social’s #ScientificData: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 📊

Fantastic to see findings of this mammoth project published. Many, many useful insights into how the world sees scientists. Congrats to lead researchers @nielsmede.bsky.social‬ & @colognaviktoria.bsky.social‬. + Thanks to @mdmarques.com for the opportunity to be involved.

I know it often feels as if scientific evidence doesn't matter any more, but a global survey of 72K people in 68 countries shows most of us trust science, and 79% of NZers want scientists to tell us about their research; by Laura Kranz & @scicomguy.bsky.social theconversation.com/despite-fear...

My new piece for Slate on the current fluoride debate and why the data shows that putting a tiny bit of fluoride in our water is good, actually. slate.com/technology/2...

Out now - National Academies consensus report on Understanding and Addressing Misinformation About Science 🧪 It was a privilege to serve as one of the 15 committee members from a wide range of scientific disciplines who put this report together. Quick 🧵1/ www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/und...

1) Correlation ≠ Causation: Just because two things are linked doesn’t mean one caused the other. 2) The Dose Makes the Poison: Even water can be harmful in excess. Context matters! 3) "Natural" Doesn’t Mean Safer: Natural substances can be just as harmful (or more so) than synthetic ones.

Tracking #conspiracy belief over time offers a window into how psychological needs factor into such thinking. A real pleasure to be involved in this great study led by @ealbath.bsky.social ! (+ @mdmarques.com and others)

Does Lower Psychological Need Satisfaction Foster Conspiracy Belief? Longitudinal Effects Over 3 Years in New Zealand impressive paper led by @ealbath.bsky.social using longitudinal data to add evidence to the causal nature of how conspiracy beliefs and psychological needs are related OA link below

Several key New Zealand orgs focussed on monitoring #misinformation closed this year. So I (and several more knowledgeable co-authors) wrote something about how we need to keep tabs on this sort of thing.

The effect of scientific conspiracy theories on scepticism towards biotechnologies excited to see this #conspiracytheories paper out w/ collaborators @scicomguy.bsky.social, Art Stukas, & Jim McLennan Will write a 🧵 soon but for now here's the #openaccess link journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

here's some of our research on the stability of belief in #conspiracytheories over time (curious to see the @altmetric.com ) paper led by @matthewmatix.bsky.social incl @lingtax.bsky.social @scicomguy.bsky.social @srhastraea.bsky.social Mawson & Clarke www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Proud to have played a very small part in the building of this Civic News Index. The Index explores the role that news & info play in US communities, using data to map drivers of engaged, informed, equitable & healthy communities. civicinfoindex.org

had an interesting chat with @parkersmckenzie.bsky.social yesterday about US election conspiracy theories www.thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/u...

Between Blueanon conspiracy theories running rampant a la QAnon, and the conspirscy theorists that will be in executive positions thought it would be useful to have a conspiracy theory researcher starter pack. This is a work in progress so ask to be included or drop names go.bsky.app/FP8gwWj

Are you a news avoider? 🚫📰📺📻🚫You're not alone. A new study shows that most Kiwis avoid the news at least some of the time. Was a pleasure to work on this research with Alex Beattie and Richard Arnold. theconversation.com/news-blues-s...