Scientific Journal’s Endorsement of Joe Biden Lowered Trust, Study Finds

President Joe Biden speaks during a Nowruz reception in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on March 20, 2023. Richard Pierrin/AFP via Getty Images

A science journal’s political endorsement lowered trust among supporters of former President Donald Trump, a study has found.

Nature endorsed President Joe Biden in October 2020. The journal said Biden, a candidate at the time, “has shown that he respects the values of research, and has vowed to work to restore the United States’ fractured global relationships.” It denigrated Trump, claiming he had a “disregard for evidence and the truth, disrespect for those he disagrees with and [a] toxic attitude towards women.” It also claimed Biden would handle the COVID-19 pandemic better than Trump had.

That endorsement caused distrust in the science journal among supporters of Trump, Floyd Jiuyun Zhang, a researcher with Stanford University found.

Zhang surveyed 4,260 people in 2021. Some were shown Nature’s endorsement while others were shown Nature’s recent updates to its website, with no sign of the endorsement. Trump supporters shown the endorsement were more likely to say they had no trust at all in Nature’s impartiality, and less likely to say they had a little, a moderate amount, a lot, or a great deal of trust.

The endorsement also led to Trump supporters having less trust in all scientists’ knowledge and impartiality.

After being shown the endorsement, Trump supporters were offered articles about new COVID-19 variants and how well the COVID-19 vaccines were performing against them. They could choose to view an article from Nature, the Mayo Clinic, news media websites, or a combination of the three.

“The endorsement led to a statistically significant 14.2-percentage-point reduction in the frequency at which Trump supporters requested Nature articles,” Zhang said, or a 38.3 percent decline when compared to Trump supporters who had not been shown the endorsement.

Biden supporters were more likely to trust Nature and scientists after viewing the endorsement, but the results were small and often statistically insignificant.

“This study shows that electoral endorsements by Nature and potentially other scientific journals or organizations can undermine public trust in the endorser, particularly among supporters of the out-party candidate. This has negative impacts on trust in the scientific community as a whole and on information acquisition behaviours with respect to critical public health issues,” Zhang said.

“Positive effects among supporters of the endorsed candidate are null or small, and they do not offset the negative effects among the opposite camp. This probably results in a lower overall level of public confidence and more polarization along the party line. There is little evidence that seeing the endorsement message changes opinions about the candidates,” he added.

The study was published by Nature Human Behaviour. It was funded by the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford Center for American Democracy.

Arthur Lupia, a political science professor at the University of Michigan, said that the study “provides evidence that, when a publication whose credibility comes from science decides to politicize its content, it can damage that credibility.”

He added: “If this decreased credibility, in turn, reduces the impact of scientific research published in the journal, people who would have benefited from the research are the worse for it. I read Zhang’s work as signalling that Nature should avoid the temptation to politicize its pages. In doing so, the journal can continue to inform and enlighten as many people as possible.”

Several other journals also endorsed Biden in the 2020 election. They included Scientific American and Lancet. Those journals endorsed a candidate for the first time. Nature had endorsed candidates in the past.

Then-President Donald Trump speaks to the media before departing on Marine One en route to Ohio and Texas, from the White House South Lawn in Washington on Aug. 7, 2019. Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times

Nature Responds

Nature, noting the survey results, said it would keep endorsing political candidates.

Nature’s editorial said that whether journals should endorse candidates if it leads to lowered trust is “an important question” but that there are “no easy answers” and that “inaction has costs, too.”

“Considering the record of Trump’s four years in office, this journal judged that silence was not an option,” Nature’s editors said.

They repeated criticism of Trump for withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, taking action to defund the World Health Organization, moving away from a pact between Iran and other countries, and over how he handled the pandemic.

“It is hard not to think of a worst-case scenario for public health, climate change or nuclear security had Trump remained in office today,” Nature said.

“Nature doesn’t often make political endorsements, and we carefully weigh up the arguments when considering whether to do so. When individuals seeking office have a track record of causing harm, when they are transparently dismissive of facts and integrity, when they threaten scholarly autonomy, and when they are disdainful of cooperation and consensus, it becomes important to speak up,” the editorial concluded. “We use our voice sparingly and always offer evidence to back up what we say. And, when the occasion demands it, we will continue to do so.”