Chapter 16: Further Reading — Scientific Misinformation: Climate, Vaccines, and GMOs

The following annotated bibliography covers the major themes in this chapter, with priority given to landmark studies, accessible book-length treatments, and open-access resources. Entries are organized thematically.

Foundational Works on Science Denial

1. Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Bloomsbury Press, 2010.

The foundational text for understanding organized science denial. Oreskes and Conway, both historians of science, trace the same network of scientists, think tanks, and PR firms from tobacco to climate change, documenting the tobacco strategy's deliberate application across multiple controversies. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why climate change denial and tobacco denial look so similar — it is not a coincidence. The book spawned a documentary film of the same name (2014) that is also recommended for classroom use.

2. Lewandowsky, Stephan, Ullrich Ecker, and John Cook. "Beyond Misinformation: Understanding and Coping with the 'Post-Truth' Era." Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 6(4): 353-369, 2017.

A comprehensive academic review of the psychology of misinformation, the failure of simple correction, and the implications of cultural cognition and inoculation research. Accessible to undergraduate readers. Open access.

3. Diethelm, Pascal, and Martin McKee. "Denialism: What Is It and How Should Scientists Respond?" European Journal of Public Health 19(1): 2-4, 2009.

Identified five characteristics of science denial that have become a widely used framework: fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible demands for evidence, cherry-picking, and conspiracy theories. Short and highly readable; useful for students as an analytic tool.

Climate Change Misinformation

4. Cook, John, et al. "Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature." Environmental Research Letters 8(2), 2013.

The original 97% consensus paper: a systematic analysis of approximately 12,000 peer-reviewed papers that quantified the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. The methodology is transparent and has been replicated. Open access.

5. Supran, Geoffrey, and Naomi Oreskes. "Assessing ExxonMobil's Climate Change Communications (1977-2014)." Environmental Research Letters 12(8), 2017.

A rigorous quantitative analysis of ExxonMobil's internal and external communications about climate change, documenting the systematic divergence between what the company's own scientists found and what the company communicated publicly. The methodology is reproducible and the findings have held up to scrutiny. Open access.

6. Lewandowsky, Stephan, et al. "The Pivotal Role of Perceived Scientific Consensus in Acceptance of Science." Nature Climate Change 3(4): 399-401, 2013.

Documents that communicating the 97% consensus on climate change increases acceptance of climate science, and that the consensus message is particularly effective when combined with inoculation against the false balance frame. Open access.

7. van der Linden, Sander, Anthony Leiserowitz, Seth Rosenthal, and Edward Maibach. "Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change." Global Challenges 1(2), 2017.

The original "inoculation science" paper demonstrating that brief inoculation messages about climate science manipulation techniques reduce acceptance of misinformation. This paper helped establish prebunking as a research area. Open access.

Vaccine Misinformation

8. Larson, Heidi J. Stuck: How Vaccine Rumors Start — and Why They Don't Go Away. Oxford University Press, 2020.

The most authoritative book-length treatment of vaccine hesitancy and vaccine misinformation by one of the world's leading researchers on vaccine confidence. Larson, who directs the Vaccine Confidence Project, covers the psychology of vaccine rumors, the role of trust, and case studies from multiple countries. Essential for anyone working on vaccine communication.

9. Hotez, Peter J. The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science: A Scientist's Warning. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023.

A scientist and vaccine developer's account of the COVID-19 anti-vaccine movement, arguing that it represents a new and dangerous form of political extremism with measurable public health consequences. Accessible, passionate, and well-sourced.

10. Kata, Anna. "Anti-Vaccine Activists, Web 2.0, and the Postmodern Paradigm — An Overview of Tactics and Tropes Used Online by the Anti-Vaccination Movement." Vaccine 30(25): 3778-3789, 2012.

A systematic analysis of anti-vaccine rhetorical tactics online, providing a taxonomy that remains useful for analyzing contemporary anti-vaccine content. Covers how anti-vaccine actors use: anecdotal evidence, conspiracy theories, appeals to authority, and misrepresentation of science.

Cultural Cognition and the Psychology of Science Denial

11. Kahan, Dan M., et al. "The Polarizing Impact of Science Literacy and Numeracy on Perceived Climate Change Risks." Nature Climate Change 2: 732-735, 2012.

The landmark cultural cognition paper demonstrating that scientific literacy and numeracy are associated with greater polarization on climate change, not less. This finding directly challenges the deficit model and is foundational to understanding why information provision alone fails. Open access.

12. Pennycook, Gordon, and David G. Rand. "The Psychology of Fake News." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 25(5): 388-402, 2021.

An accessible and comprehensive review of the psychological mechanisms underlying misinformation acceptance and sharing, covering both the motivated reasoning and the "lazy thinking" (analytic failure) accounts. Useful for understanding when the deficit model might partially apply and when it doesn't. Open access.

13. Campbell, Troy H., and Aaron C. Kay. "Solution Aversion: On the Relation Between Ideology and Motivated Disbelief." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 107(5): 809-824, 2014.

The original "solution aversion" paper demonstrating that rejection of scientific consensus is partly driven by aversion to associated policy solutions. The experimental design is elegant and the implications for science communication are significant.

GMO and Evolution

14. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects. National Academies Press, 2016.

The most comprehensive systematic review of GMO safety evidence available, conducted by one of the world's most authoritative scientific bodies. Freely available online in full. An essential reference for evaluating GMO safety claims.

15. Forrest, Barbara, and Paul R. Gross. Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. Oxford University Press, 2004.

The most comprehensive academic analysis of the intelligent design movement, tracing its origins in creation science, the development of the "Wedge" strategy, and the scientific and philosophical inadequacy of ID's claims. Essential for understanding evolution denial beyond its surface-level scientific claims.

Science Communication

Roozenbeek, Jon, and Sander van der Linden. "The Fake News Game: Actively Inoculating Against the Psychological Mechanisms of Misinformation." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 75: 65-73, 2019.

The foundational paper for the "Bad News" game and prebunking interventions, demonstrating that playing the game reduces susceptibility to manipulation techniques. Open access. Followed by a series of papers scaling prebunking to YouTube advertisements reaching hundreds of millions of users.