A randomized experiment of 1,024 U.S. adults was conducted to examine the effect of the war on science frame on perceptions of scientists’ credibility. Because recent use of this frame is a response to the Trump Administration, those who politically align with him (e.g., conservatives) are likely to experience identity threat when confronted with the war on science frame. Results show that when viewed as aggressive, the war on science frame prompted conservatives to report lower agreement with a scientist credibility index than liberals, suggesting that the war on science frame has the potential to further polarize science.

When the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget released the “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again” on March 16, 2017, many critics of the proposed funding cuts responded with a “war on science” frame. Reviewing this budget blueprint, The New York Times editorial board published a pointed indictment titled, “The Trump Administration’s War on Science” (Editorial Board, 2017). A month earlier, writing in Scientific American, executive director of the California Academy of Sciences, Jonathan Foley, stated, “Make no mistake: There is a War on Science in America” (Foley, 2017). Even though the “war on science” frame has been adopted by the ideological left to indict the right for their stance on anthropogenic climate change, there has not been any systematic research examining the effect of this frame. While this frame seems to be a “call to arms” to defend science, it likely has unintended negative consequences because it is aggressive, assumes conflict, and presupposes a misleading for-science versus anti-science dichotomy. In this study, we conduct a randomized experiment embedded in an online survey of 1,024 U.S. adults to examine the effect of the war on science frame.

The War on Science Frame While the perceptions of a “hostile media” against one’s views has been shown to be negatively related to supporting policy addressing climate change (Hart, Feldman, Leiserowitz, & Maibach, 2015), the specific war on science frame has yet to be empirically analyzed. The war on science frame gained popularity with the 2005 book The Republican War on Science (Mooney, 2005; see Nisbet & Scheufele, 2009) and is still used to telegraph an ideological rivalry over science in terms of an “anti-science,” “ignorant right against the intellectual,” “pro-science left” (see Faust, 2017, n.p.). To many on the left, the election of Donald Trump signaled that this war would reach new depths, inciting a call to arms to mobilize a science defending army. This type of conflict framing presupposes clear right and wrong sides to the “war on science.” This is why the war on science frame could have negative and further polarizing consequences because this frame could be identity threatening to those on the “wrong” side. Consider the 2017 March for Science that took place on Earth Day (see Weinberg, 2017). The March for Science was organized in response to concerns over the impact that a Trump Administration would have on science and was labeled a “call to support and safeguard the scientific community” (see Wessel, 2017, n.p.). Implied in much of the rhetoric surrounding the March for Science was the war on science frame. For example, the New York Times published an article titled “Scientists, Feeling Under Siege, March Against Trump Policies” (St. Fleur, 2017). The March for Science and the war on science frame may do more harm than good. Communication scholar Dominique Brossard cautioned that if the March for Science is “interpreted as ‘These people who like science are marching against Trump,’ it could politicize science even more and potentially hurt public trust in science as an institution” (cf. Wessel, 2017, n.p.). While the organizers of the March for Science promoted it as an inclusive celebration of science, Pew survey data report that public support for the March for Science was delineated by political party lines (Funk & Rainie, 2017). Field studies conducted during the March for Science concluded that only about 2% of marchers identified as Republican (Mervis, 2017; Ross, Struminger, Winking, & Wedemeyer-Strombel, 2018). An overt embracement of science as their cause by the left could alienate those on the ideological right. Writing for Slate, Jeremy Samuel Faust (2017) commented that, “Being ‘pro-science’ has become a bizarre cultural phenomenon in which liberals (and other members of the cultural elite) engage in public displays of self-reckoned intelligence as a kind of performance art” (n.p.). A liberal-championed “we are smart and you are not” message will not mend any political division.

Experimental Design and Stimuli Participants were randomly assigned into four conditions and were instructed to read an article posted by the fictitious scientific blog, Science Today. This blog post was based on a real online blog post (Foley, 2017) from Scientific American but edited to meet the needs of the current study while keeping the same structure and length. To contribute to ecological validity, we used a real blog from a prominent source as the foundation for the stimuli. Participants randomly assigned to the first condition read an article titled “The War on Science!” Those randomly assigned to the second condition read an article titled “The Challenge for Science,” those in the third condition read an article titled “The Neglect of Science,” while those in the fourth condition (the control) read an article titled “Who Invented Baseball?”1 The theoretical reasoning for the inclusion of the “challenge for science” and the “neglect of science” frames is to compare them with the perceived aggressiveness of the war on science frame and to test if less aggressive framing, which still attends to the difficulties science may face with a Trump Administration, would be more inclusive and less threatening. The challenge for science, however, is still somewhat aggressive but not as aggressive as the war on science frame, whereas the neglect of science was purposefully developed to be nonaggressive. A pretest was conducted with participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to check manipulation and variations in levels of aggressiveness for all three science articles. Data from 104 MTurk participants confirmed, F(2, 101) = 5.36, p < .01, that the war frame was more aggressive (M = 4.60, SD = 1.40) than the challenge (M = 3.53, SD = 1.66) and neglect frames (M = 3.79, SD = 1.46). Although this MTurk data support Hypothesis 1a, these data are not used in the final hypotheses testing reported below.

Sample, Randomization, and Measures To test our hypotheses and answer our research question, we analyze data from 1,024 participants from the Qualtrics’ Online Consumer Panel collected from May 11 to 15, 2017, with quotas for gender, age, and race to match the U.S. census. Quota-based online samples come with a variety of methodical concerns over representativeness to a larger population. Because “[f]or surveys, representation is typically of highest importance; for experiments, randomization is often more critical” (Baker et al., 2013, p. 99) and the fact that we are interested in “process inference” and not “population inference” (Hayes, 2009, Chapter 3; Mook, 1983)—meaning that we are testing hypotheses about cognitive processes with a randomized experiment and not inferring population parameters—the representativeness of the online Qualtrics sample to a general U.S. population is not a serious threat to the validity of the results reported below.2 Respondents were randomly assigned into the four conditions previously detailed and were instructed to read the scientific blog post that appeared on their screen. The subsample size for each condition is as follows: War on Science, 274; Challenge for Science, 258; Neglect of Science, 220; and the Control, 272. Random assignment was successful as there were no statistically significant differences across conditions with regard to age, gender, ethnicity, education, and political ideology. The main criterion variable is the credibility of scientists. This variable was measured based on questions recently used by the Pew Research Center (see Funk & Kennedy, 2016). Respondents were asked their agreement, on a 5-point scale where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree, with the following statements: (1) “Scientists’ research findings are influenced by the best available evidence” (M = 3.89; SD = 1.03); (2) “Scientists’ research findings are influenced by concern for the public interest” (M = 3.54, SD = 1.09); (3) “Scientists’ research findings are influenced by their desire to advance their own careers” (reverse coded, M = 2.89, SD = 1.16); and (4) “Scientists’ research findings are influenced by their personal political leanings” (reverse coded, M = 2.94; SD = 1.21).3 These four items were averaged together to create a scientists’ credibility index (M = 3.31, SD = 0.75).4 Our second measure of interest is the perceived aggressiveness of the stimuli. This was measured by a single item that asked respondents, “How do you rate the overall style of the article you just read? (1) Too polite (3.1%), (2) Somewhat polite (12.5%), (3) Standard (56.8%), (4) Somewhat aggressive (23.7%), (5) Too aggressive (3.9%)” (M = 3.12, SD = 0.79). Because “too polite” and “too aggressive” have so few respondents making the distribution leptokurtic (K = 0.14) and the fact that there are no respondents who identified as liberal reporting any of the stimuli as being “too aggressive,” for the analyses we collapsed the variable into a 3-point scale (1 = Polite, 2 = Standard, 3 = Aggressive; M = 2.11, SD = 0.65).

Results Hypothesis 1a, which stated that the war on science frame would be rated the most aggressive of all the stimuli, is confirmed, F(3, 1019) = 15.3, p < .001. The level of perceived aggressiveness for all the stimuli follows a logical pattern: The war on science frame is rated the most aggressive (M = 2.31, SD = 0.69), followed by the challenge for science (M = 2.14, SD = 0.67), followed by the neglect of science (M = 2.02, SD = 0.66), and then the control/baseball stimuli (M = 1.97, SD = 0.49). Hypothesis 1b stated that conservatives would rate the war on science frame as more aggressive than liberals. While conservatives were consistently more likely to rate any of the science frames as more aggressive than the baseball/control stimulus, F(3, 298) = 3.92, p < .01, conservatives, moderates, and liberals viewed the war on science frame equally aggressive, F(2, 271) = 0.017, ns. Hypotheses 2a through 2c specify an interaction between condition and ideology on participants’ agreement with the scientists’ credibility index. Even though an interaction term in an analysis of variance (ANOVA) is statistically significant, F(3, 1015) = 3.12, p < .05, and that Hypotheses 2a and 2c were supported, Hypothesis 2b was not supported. Figure 1 presents the data modeled with a LOESS (locally weighted scatterplot smoother) curve function to illustrate these relationships. As can be seen, there is very little difference between frames for those who identify as conservative. None of the frames appear to move conservatives one way or the other on the scientists’ credibility index. Liberals, on the other hand, are significantly moved by all science-based stimuli regardless of the frame. For liberals, priming science increases their agreement with the scientists’ credibility index. Download Open in new tab Download in PowerPoint Hypothesis 3 stated that there would be a significant three-way interaction between the war on science frame, ideology, and perceived aggressiveness on ratings of scientists’ credibility. This three-way multiplicative term (condition × ideology × aggressiveness) in an ANOVA produced a significant interaction, F(3, 1007) = 2.73, p < .05, as it does in the analogous but more specified OLS regression where the interaction term (war on science dummy variable × ideology × aggressiveness) is positive and significant (b = 0.08, p < .001; see Table 1). Participants in the war on science frame condition produce the only significant ideology/aggressiveness interaction, and there were no interaction patterns present in the analyses of participants in the other conditions. The more aggressive conservatives felt the war on science frame was, the less likely they were to see scientists as credible. Liberals, on the other hand, displayed the opposite pattern. Moderates were not influenced by level of aggressiveness (see Figure 2). Table 1. Ordinary Least Squares Regression Predicting Agreement With the Scientists’ Credibility Index. View larger version Download Open in new tab Download in PowerPoint The research question asked about the effects of the challenge for science and neglect of science frames. Although they were rated as less aggressive than the war on science frame, and without taking into account the three-way interaction with perceived aggressiveness, conservatives did not respond to these frames, whereas liberals responded to them but not in any meaningfully different way than their response to the war on science frame. There is one curious finding among moderates and the neglect of science frame. Compared with moderates in the control condition, moderates in the neglect of science condition were significantly more likely to report higher agreement with the scientists’ credibility index (t = 2.47, p < .01).

Discussion This study shows that the often-used war on science frame has the potential to further politicize and polarize science. When viewed as aggressive, the war on science frame prompted conservatives to report lower agreement with the scientists’ credibility index, whereas liberals reported higher agreement. If viewed as aggressive, the identity threatening war on science frame caused conservatives to cast doubt on the motivations and integrity of scientists, which is the opposite of the intended goal of those who often use this frame for promoting and protecting the legitimacy of scientists and the scientific enterprise. The three-way interaction between the war on science frame, political ideology, and perceived level of aggressiveness, reported in Figure 2, illustrates this politicization of science, with liberals moving up the scientists’ credibility index and conservatives moving down the index. Overall, liberal participants reacted uniformly positive to any frame concerning a science message compared with liberals in the control condition. Conservatives were relatively flat across conditions suggesting that the less aggressive challenge for science and neglect of science frames were not more inclusive or encouraging for conservatives than the war on science frame, or even the baseball control stimulus. Nevertheless, because there were no interactions with aggressiveness, scientists, science communicators, and journalists may want to consider using a challenge for science or a neglect of science frame instead of the war on science. Because these frames are not as aggressive, conservatives will not be as threatened and will, in turn, not discredit scientists and their scientific findings. Additionally, the challenge for science and neglect of science frames were as equally effective as the war on science frame in engaging liberals. Furthermore, the neglect of science frame appeals to moderates as well. While the challenge for science and the neglect of science frames may not push conservatives to delegitimize science, these frames do not influence their perceptions of the credibility of scientists. Future science communication research should develop and test the ways in which to positively influence those predisposed to rate lower agreement with the scientists’ credibility index. Consider the mean agreement with the index by ideology of participants in the control condition (conservative, 2.96; moderate, 3.19; liberal, 3.25). Without any priming or cueing of science, those who read an article about baseball (the control stimulus) were ideologically split on their agreement with the scientists’ credibility index, F(1, 270) = 13.39, p < .001. At baseline, conservatives report less agreement than liberals on the scientists’ credibility index. Future research may want to focus on testing ways of framing science specifically targeting conservatives. For example, frames of science involving areas such as military advancement, nuclear power, and space exploration (e.g., areas of science that enjoy conservatives’ support or less partisan divide, see Anderson, 2015; Nisbet, Cooper, & Garrett, 2015) could be successful in fostering agreement with the scientists’ credibility index among conservatives. Future research should also test the three frames (war, challenge, neglect) and levels of aggression with narratives that place liberals and not the Trump Administration as the aggressor to produce evidence that aggressive war frames are polarizing regardless of political ideology. Because aggressive war frames attack the “other side,” they inherently polarize science regardless of ideology. For example, in Scientific American, Michael Sherman (2013) penned an article titled “The Liberal War on Science,” which sparked quite a bit of criticism and rebuttals, particularly from, The Republican War on Science author, Chris Mooney in Mother Jones (Mooney, 2013). Testing war frames across ideologies as well as across highly polarized issues such as gun control, immigration, and abortion will shed further light on how war frames further polarize issues in the United States. Headlines such as “The Conservative War on (insert issue)” or “The Liberal War on (insert issue)” are commonplace, and future research should examine the extent of influence of war frames in fostering identity threatening behaviors and polarization. While public confidence in science as an institution has been historically strong (Funk, 2017), it has become increasingly polarized and becoming even partisanized in that liberals are claiming science as “theirs” while indicting conservatives for waging a war on it. Our findings suggest that aggressive war narratives that claim science as a liberal agenda can push conservatives away from science, which can then threaten the relatively stable confidence that Americans hold for science. Should this confidence be threatened, it will be significantly more difficult to depolarize science as an institution and regain public confidence in science among conservatives. Guided by “issue ownership theory” (Petrocik, 1996; Petrocik, Benoit, & Hansen, 2003), future research could also exam the level of “ownership” and “rejection” of science across political parties and how perceived Democratic ownership of science is detrimental to science legitimacy and institutions of higher education and if it promotes anti-science and anti-intellectualism among Republicans. A potential limitation to this study is the use of the scientists’ credibility index as the only dependent variable of interest. Triangulating results from models predicting this variable with models predicting other conceptually related measures such as scientists’ trustworthiness and expertise would have strengthened this study. Future research should examine the impact of the interaction between the war on science frame, ideology, and aggressiveness on these important measures. Another potential avenue for future research to consider is the role that education and political sophistication may play as a moderating variable in how people interpret science frames. Recent scholarship (Dunlop, McCright, & Yarosh, 2016; McCright, 2011) highlights that those who are highly educated and politically sophisticated follow elite cues (see Zaller, 1992) and have the cognitive ability for high directional motivated reasoning (see Flynn, Nyhan, & Reifler, 2017) that confirms their political stances and protects their political ideology. This means that polarization can be more severe among educated political sophisticates. Although, the current study was not designed to test such hypotheses, a post hoc analysis of a four-way interaction between the war on science frame, ideology, aggressiveness, and education predicting the science credibility index was not significant. Such four-way multiplicative terms are not the ideal method to test such complex interactions, and, therefore, future research should develop an experimental design specifically to examine such a moderating role of education and political sophistication in the relationships found in our analyses.

Conclusion One of the core norms in the “ethos of science,” according to Robert K. Merton (1942), is the need for science to be impersonal and for the acceptance or rejection of claims entering the list of science . . . not to depend on the personal or social attributes of [the science or the scientist]; his race, nationality, religion, class, and personal qualities are as such irrelevant. (p. 270) But given how science is embedded in society and is inevitably connected to policy and governance, it is impossible to separate the politics from the science or the science from the politics (Boguslaw, 1968; Merton, 1942; Mitroff, 1974). With high levels of political polarization in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2014), science communicators should talk about science in a way that does not deepen the ideological divide or strengthen political antipathy. The results of this study suggest that the use of the aggressive war on science frame may increase political polarization of science. This study indicates that this aggressive frame has the potential to politically polarize science by affecting perceptions of scientists’ credibility. Therefore, scientists, science communicators, journalists, and others eager to engage people in science from across the ideological spectrum should abandon the aggressive war frame. If people start to mentally tie-in science with partisanized and polarized politics in their cognitive schemas, the scientific process will be undermined and the overall credibility of scientific endeavors threatened. This could lead to serious consequences affecting public support, government funding, and policy surrounding science, as well as ripple effects influencing public perceptions of research institutions and higher education.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. ORCID iDs

Bruce Hardy https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4852-7373 John C. Besley https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8778-4973 Shupei Yuan https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1796-9611

Notes 1.

For those interested in full text and graphic layout of the stimuli, please contact the authors directly. 2.

Socio demographic variables suggest that the data are somewhat representative to the larger U.S. adult population. The mean age was 46.2 years (SD = 16.5), 51.6% of the sample were female, 78.1% were White, 14.4% were Black, and 25% were Hispanic. The mean education of the sample was 14.5 (SD = 1.9) years of formal education. On a 5-point scale where 1 = very liberal and 5 = very conservative, the mean ideology of the sample was 3.1 (SD = 1.1). 3.

These four questions measure level of agreement with statements about the credibility of scientists, and we therefore treat them as “cause indicators” and not “effect indicators” in this measurements model (see Bollen & Lennox, 1991). While considerations over inter-item consistency are not necessary with “causal indicator measurement models” (Bollen, 1984; Bollen & Lennox, 1991, pp. 306-307), we calculated Cronbach’s alpha (α = .58) and conducted an exploratory factor analyses to confirm that there is only one dimension underlying these four measures (eigenvalue = 1.79). 4.

To preserve the 5-point strongly disagree to strongly agree scale for interpretation and visualization of the analyses, these items were averaged together instead of summed.