The Importance of Consensus in Vaccine Safety

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Researchers found mentioning the consensus among doctors about vaccine safety significantly raised the number of people who said they would. Intended uptake rose by about 4 percentage points compared with a control group that was not told about the doctors' views. Those intentions carried through into a similar difference for actual vaccination between the two groups as measured some nine months after vaccines became widely available.

Shocked by the impact of online misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, several researchers are launching efforts to survey scientists’ thinking on issues from vaccine safety to climate change. They hope that their projects will make scientific debate, and degrees of consensus, more visible and transparent, benefiting public conversation and policymaking. However, others suggest that these attempts might merely further politicize public debate.

This is an audio version of our Feature: Can giant surveys of scientists fight misinformation on COVID, climate change and more?

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