The Narrative Truth about Scientific Misinformation

"Are science and narrative truly at odds? Additionally, is this contrast a cause of scientific misinformation?"

Storytelling is the act of sharing information through a narrative. Storytelling, like misinformation, is sometimes seen as fundamentally opposed to scientific discovery. Whereas science searches for broad patterns that capture general truths about the world, narratives search for connections through human experience that confer meaning and value onto reality. Using vaccine communication as an example, this paper explores how these contrasting conceptions of truth manifest across different contexts to either promote or counter scientific misinformation. Its discussion is centred around the two most common goals scientists have reported for engaging with science communication: informing audiences through knowledge and defending science through persuasion.

Research into vaccine communication has viewed narrative as a source of inaccurate information that influences vaccine attitudes and behaviours away from science. Antivaccine advocates frequently rely on personal testimonies to argue that vaccines are neither safe nor effective. Research finds that these adverse narratives have a disproportionate impact on vaccine attitudes and behaviours, even when paired with accurate scientific risk information; this biasing effect of narrative information is difficult to counter. A similar dichotomy has been identified between narrative and science, where studies often compare statistical risk information against exemplars to see which has a greater influence on attitudes and behaviours. These differences arise because science and narrative represent two distinct ways of constructing reality.

The paper looks at some of the differences and shared ground between narratives and science. Narratives can communicate about science through text, audio, video, and interactive modalities in textbooks, television, news, film, advertisements, and social media posts. Science narratives can be created to teach science in the classroom or persuade decision makers to support a particular policy. They may be part of a broad communication campaign to change public attitudes and behaviours, or they may simply be personal experiences about science shared among friends. Scientists and television producers incorporating science into entertainment programming may have a shared goal but a different approach: Scientists may be more focused on the accuracy of the science with regard to the external world (scientific thinking), while the producers may be focused more on the authenticity and plausibility of how the science interacts within the story (narrative thinking).

As is argued here, narratives can lead to accurate knowledge gains, but people can have trouble distinguishing specific facts from falsehoods within narratives and often accept information within narratives without scrutiny. Nonetheless, there is enthusiasm about using narrative to enhance knowledge within science education, helping learners make connections between new concepts and lived experiences, relate abstractions to concrete examples, create social and emotional engagement, and spark interest and motivation.

Rather than trying to counter narrative bias in exchange for scientific understandings, narrative persuasion embraces narrative bias and explores how to use the characteristics of narrative thinking to build support for specific viewpoints. The Transportation-Imagery Model, Extended Elaboration Likelihood Model, and Entertainment Overcoming Resistance Model describe complementary mechanisms where audiences processing narrative messages are so focused on making connections within the story world that they do not have the cognitive resources remaining to generate counterarguments. The audience is therefore more likely to adopt the perspective of the narrative - especially in light of the fact that, because audiences often choose narratives for entertainment purposes, they are often unaware that the narrative may be trying to persuade. The power of narratives to persuade audiences away from preexisting attitudes depends on creating narratives that maximise narrative thinking about the story world while minimising elements that may break this engagement and trigger external scrutiny.

Evidence shows that narratives can effectively persuade audiences toward a particular application or interpretation of scientific knowledge through a number of cognitive and emotional mechanisms. Whether or not this persuasion creates or counters scientific misinformation depends on the goals of the narrator and how the narrative is constructed. The paper outlines five future research areas that may deepen both our understanding of the intersection of narrative and scientific misinformation and our ability to act strategically within it:

1. Explore narrative's dimensions and contexts: What types of narrative constructions have the greatest impact on which outcome variables within science education? How do narrative persuasion mechanisms differ in impact across varied scientific contexts?
2. Bring nature of science out of the classroom: Science can look beyond using narrative to change attitudes about specific scientific findings and also use it to change attitudes about the process and truth value of science itself. Future research could transfer ideas about using narrative to teach the nature of science from the classroom to the larger media environment.
3. Keep in mind that audiences are active: Audiences make choices about what messages to attend to, how long to stay with each message, and how to interpret the content. These choices may collectively play a role in how narrative intersects with scientific misinformation within the larger information environment. How do science narratives work within this less controlled but more realistic environment of active audiences?
4. Complete the feedback loop: Scientists are also audiences who process information through narrative thinking. Future work could explore how scientific narratives, whether espousing misinformation or not, cycle back to influence the scientists themselves and what opportunities this feedback may afford.
5. Excite audiences about science: Science is well situated to serve as a context for awe and wonder because it already redefines what we know about the world through novel and often surprising ideas. Narrative as a communication format seems well suited for this task because it is a simulation of human experience, with all its complexities, contradictions, and wonder. Future work could explore how narrative can excite audiences about science through awe and wonder and what the resultant outcomes would be with regard to scientific misinformation.

In conclusion: "While the disparity between science and narrative can promote the acceptance of scientific misinformation, it also provides science with an opportunity to counter misinformation by making connections between accurate science knowledge and human experience."