Misinformation about climate change has polluted our information landscape for three decades, poisoning public discourse and clouding minds. We tend to think that the main danger of misinformation is causing people to believe wrong things. But there are a multitude of ways that it does damage.
Misinformation builds distrust of scientists and scientific institutions—a dangerous trend during a pandemic when public health depends on people following the advice of scientific experts.
An insidious element of misinformation is it can cancel out accurate information. When people are confronted with conflicting information (e.g., fact and myth) and no way to resolve the conflict, the danger is they disengage and believe neither. This means that if we ignore the threat of misinformation, we leave the public (and our efforts to communicate accurate information) vulnerable to misinformation.
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