Re-Building Trust

As a response to the replication crisis, reforms call for the implementation of open science standards. In this regard, open science badges are a promising method to signal a study’s adherence to open science practices (OSP). In an experimental study, we investigated whether badges on journal article title pages affect non-scientists’ trust in scientists. Furthermore, we analyzed the moderating role of epistemic beliefs in this regard. We randomly assigned 270 non-scientists to two of three conditions: Badges awarded (visible compliance to OSP), badges not awarded (visible non-compliance to OSP) and no badges (compliance not visible, control condition). Results indicate that badges influence trust in scientists as well as the epistemic beliefs of participants. However, epistemic beliefs did not moderate the effect of badges on trust. In sum, our paper provides support to the notion that badges are an effective means to promote epistemic beliefs and trust in scientists.

This study is an expansion to a prior study of Schneider et al. (2020, http://dx.doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.3364), in which we investigated the effects of open science badges in journal articles on trust in scientists. Since college students are a population that engage with scientific studies on a regular basis, the sample of the first study focused on this population. Among other results, the study revealed an effect of open science badges on trust in scientists. In two expansion studies we investigate the robustness of the effects over other populations (external validity). This study expands the investigation to include a sample of the public in the United Kingdom.