How Can We Save Science?
We can create a truth sandwich around false information.
Posted March 19, 2025 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Science is under attack. Research funding is being cut. Scientists are being fired. Data are being deleted. Long-running disinformation campaigns underlie these attacks. To save science, we must counter the disinformation and promote the truth.
In the last few weeks, the U.S. has substantially cut scientific research. There are cuts to research funding through the NIH (National Institutes of Health) and NSF (National Science Foundation). Government scientists have been fired, including researchers at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Basic data on government websites has been taken down. These cuts make tracking diseases, storms, and hazards more difficult. Many people have argued against these attacks, including the editors of Nature and The New York Times , as well as the organizers of the recent Stand Up for Science rallies.
Disinformation is the foundation of the attacks on science
To understand these attacks, we must consider the role of disinformation. Disinformation campaigns are more than just individual false claims. Disinformation campaigns present underlying false narratives with a mix of true and false information. Disinformation campaigns are intentional—someone is pushing the false narrative for certain goals . Disinformation is also a participatory activity (Starbird and colleagues, 2023). People not only come to believe and share the disinformation, but they also provide small stories that can be woven into the overall false narrative by those with broader audiences.
Here are two examples of how disinformation campaigns form the foundation of anti-science attacks. Whenever we consider disinformation, we should always explicitly state the true position, creating a truth sandwich around false information.
Vaccine disinformation
The truth: Vaccines are safe and effective. They’ve been one of the medical research miracles, improving life and increasing life expectancies.
Vaccine disinformation has a long history. The disinformation narrative is that vaccines aren’t safe and may cause harm. The disinformation campaigns rely on several false claims: Maybe getting immunity from catching the disease will be better, maybe eating well or consuming nutraceuticals will provide protection, and maybe vaccines cause autism or infertility . People have also circulated various false claims about the harms of getting vaccinated that have been spread by influential people.
Even if people don’t believe each piece of false information, they may start to doubt the safety of vaccines. They may think, well, maybe that isn’t true, but there are so many things being said—and where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But there isn’t a fire. It’s a disinformation smoke machine , spewing out a fog of disinformation to obscure the truth.
What is the outcome of vaccine disinformation? Bad information leads to bad decisions. Parents are refusing to get their children vaccinated. As a result, we have a resurgence of childhood illnesses, including a measles outbreak in the U.S. At least one child has died. Research has shown that COVID-19 vaccine refusals differ by politics , indicating that exposure to vaccine disinformation influences decisions (Alemi and Lee, 2023).
Another outcome is the attack on science: Cutting support for vaccine research and development, including new forms of mRNA vaccines to cure cancers. The current administration is also cutting the tracking of disease outbreaks. Vaccine disinformation is part of the foundation underlying many of the cuts to biomedical research.
Climate change disinformation
We also know the truth about climate change : The primary cause of global warming is people burning fossil fuels.
Here again, there is a long-running disinformation campaign. Much of this campaign has been funded by oil companies with political and financial goals. The disinformation: Global warming isn’t happening, that it isn’t human-caused, that it won’t be that bad, or that there isn’t anything to be done. One distressing aspect is that while most people in the U.S. and the world acknowledge climate change is human-caused and want their governments to address it, they don’t believe most other people want to do something. The disinformation campaigns have created false beliefs about social consensus, preventing actions to address climate change (Andre and colleagues, 2024; Sparkman and colleagues, 2022).
Climate change disinformation is also contributing to the anti-science attacks. Climate change information has been removed from federal websites. The current administration is making cuts not just to research grants, but also to NOAA and the EPA. Maybe if we ignore climate change, hurricanes, major storms, and fires won’t harm us.
Standing up for science
Fighting disinformation is hard. For example, fact-checking is important but isn’t enough. Trying to bring down a disinformation campaign by fact-checking each piece of information is an impossible task. It’s like playing some weird game of Jenga, the game with a tower built out of blocks. You pull blocks out, the tower gets weaker, and it eventually collapses. With a disinformation tower, you may fact-check a single block and pull it out of the tower. But suddenly two or three or a dozen more appear to stabilize the disinformation tower. The people behind disinformation campaigns keep spreading falsehoods, creating them faster than you can fact-check them.
We need to address the underlying disinformation narratives. People are lying about vaccines. People are lying about climate change. You don’t need to address each little piece of false information. Go after the whole tower—sweep it all down as a pile of lies.
We also need to build better narratives. We need a tower that is based on truth. We need to clearly state that vaccines are safe and effective. We should state that climate change is caused by humans and can be addressed. Promoting truth can be part of the remedy for disinformation, and it's part of the role of good science.
Alemi, F., & Lee, K. H. (2023). Impact of political leaning on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy: a network-based multiple mediation analysis. Cureus , 15 (8).
Andre, P., Boneva, T., Chopra, F., & Falk, A. (2024). Globally representative evidence on the actual and perceived support for climate action. Nature Climate Change , 14 (3), 253-259.
Berntsen, L., Courtney, E., Delawalla, C., Flores, J. P., Goldstein, S., & Payne, C. (2025). Why we organized ‘Stand Up For Science’. Nature Human Behaviour , 1-2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02146-0
Nature (2025, March 6). An assault on science anywhere is an assault on science everywhere. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00562-w
Sparkman, G., Geiger, N., & Weber, E. U. (2022). Americans experience a false social reality by underestimating popular climate policy support by nearly half. Nature communications , 13 (1), 4779.
Starbird, K., DiResta, R., & DeButts, M. (2023). Influence and improvisation: Participatory disinformation during the 2020 US election. Social Media+ Society , 9 (2), 20563051231177943.
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Ira E. Hyman, Jr., Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology at Western Washington University.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.