October 12, 2026

Scientists being scientists is a powerful response to misinformation

At a recent Royal Society discussion on misinformation Angela McClean, our Government Chief Scientific Adviser, told a packed room that it breaks her heart to hear that public trust in science may be declining:

 “It pains me so much that scientific information might not be trusted. Not just because of who I am. But because we collectively have gone to so much trouble and expense to get evidence that is trustworthy.”  

I feel her pain. Every time I hear that some people trust social media influencers or friends and family as much as medical research on questions about their health I want to weep.

I thought about this recently while reading a fantastic new book by Helen Pearson. ‘Beyond Belief – How Evidence Shows What Really Works’ tells the history of the evidence-based medicine movement, the drive that got going in the early 1990s to turn “good evidence” into a formal discipline: hierarchies of evidence, systematic reviews, the Cochrane Library, and so on. Pearson is open about her choice of timing. In the middle of an epidemic of misinformation and the wild west of social media, she wants people to see that good evidence can make the world a better place.

After reading the book and listening to Angela I started to think about the role of science communication in this. After all, we can spend all the time and money in the world improving the quality of evidence, but if the public aren’t seeking it out or relying on it more than anecdote, we’re in trouble.

This feeds into other discussions we’ve been having in recent years at the SMC about what we can do to up our game as a science press office in response to the many challenges we face – the ‘infodemic’ and growth of misinformation, the increasingly polarized and politicised public discourse, falling audiences for impartial and reliable news and so on.

Nowadays I like to claim that the SMC was the original misinformation charity. We didn’t call it misinformation back then, but we were set up in response to media coverage of misleading claims that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism, GM foods caused cancer, and stem cell research was a slippery slope to designer babies. So, we feel like we are already tackling misinformation. 

If I was to sum up our answer to how we can up our game, I would use the word ‘standards’. We have concluded that one of the things we can do is to double down on the quality of our work and strive to put high standards front and centre of what the SMC does.

In this context, something we’ve been discussing is how our content can better demonstrate what Angela and Helen are saying. That science is different, special, and distinct to other endeavours. Campaigners campaign, politicians fight for ideas, and commentators and influencers offer us their opinions. The SMC wants to rise above all this noise and offer scientists who can bring people back to where the best evidence lies. 

The good news is that while public trust in science seems more fragile these days, it remains remarkably high, especially when compared with trust in these other groups. And we have some clues as to why – people seem to like scientists for being impartial, independent and proper subject experts. 

One thing the SMC can do to respond to the current challenges is to be clear and emphatic about what we are looking for when we ask scientists on our database to send comments – either on new research findings or breaking news. 

The SMC’s ability to gather multiple quotes from scientists across a wide range of universities and other research institutes and put them in one place for journalists to see is pretty much unique to us. 

When it comes to new studies, these comments allow journalists to see which ones should be front page news and which are more pedestrian; any limitations the public should be aware of, and the wider scientific context. Take a hypothetical study linking cabbage to dementia. A comment that tells readers to eat their greens and calls on the government to regulate food companies isn’t what we’re after, however true it may be. What we want is a comment that engages with this study – “it’s an observational study, so it can only show association, not causation; there were only ten people in each group; the authors didn’t control for age, smoking or obesity” – because that’s the assessment only a scientist can give.

When research is preliminary, like pre-prints or conference abstracts, journalists often use SMC comments to urge their readers to treat the claims with caution.

When a big science story breaks our Rapid Reactions allow journalists to quickly see what we know and don’t know, where the weight of good quality evidence lies and whether there is consensus or disagreement.

We have long believed we are most useful to journalists as a source of reliable evidence-based facts and expertise, so this is no big change of direction. But here’s what’s changing in practice. We’re setting out, in a short accompanying note, who we ask for comments (postdoc level or above, preferably research-active, commenting within their own field) and what those comments need to do: engage with the specific study or story in front of them, focus on evidence rather than general advice or opinion, and steer clear of questioning other people’s motives. Where a comment doesn’t meet this, we’ll ask for a rewrite rather than publish it as sent. For most scientists on our database, this changes nothing – it’s what you already do brilliantly. For a minority, it means we’ll push back more than we have before.

Some scientists may feel like this is an inadequate response to the huge challenges we face, especially from a Centre that prides itself on being bold and embracing controversy.

We disagree. Offering the public unbiased, accurate, measured information gathered through rigorous scientific methods – is a strong response to misinformation. Everyone is mad at Trump and RFK for their outrageous claims about vaccines etc. But it was scientists gathered by SMCs around the world that pointed journalists to the robust evidence refuting those claims. One of the slides I use in talks shows how expert comments we issued on Trump’s September 2025 claim that paracetamol in pregnancy is linked to autism all referenced a very recent landmark study from Swedish and US researchers carried out in 186,000 people which found no link between paracetamol use by expectant mothers and autism in their children. All UK news outlets used these comments and it was lovely to watch the headlines move from Trumps false claims to the rebuttal from experts. The Sun ran the initial story under the banner ‘DON’T TAKE IT’: Donald Trump links household pain relievers to autism in historic announcement on children’s health”. After our comments went out this changed to ‘FEARMONGERING’ Trump’s claims that paracetamol linked to autism is ‘irresponsible and puts women at at risk’. Ends up that scientists being scientists can be powerful.

To coincide with this blog we have also strengthened the wording in our standard ‘Request for Comments’ and have also drafted a note on ‘SMC criteria for quotes’ which will now sit on the website.

This blog contains the thoughts of the author rather than representing the work or policy of the Science Media Centre.