John Kerr

@scicomguy.bsky.social

Researching comms and comms-ing research. Public health, psychology, risk, and media. @universityofotago.bsky.social @phcc.bsky.social

More than 400,000 New Zealanders have experienced Long Covid and nearly half are still symptomatic. Long Covid is a stark reminder of the pandemic’s persistence with real and ongoing health, social, and economic impacts. So where is the government response? www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/lon...

Long Covid has high prevalence and impact: Where is the Government response?

Long Covid's impacts on health, social, and economic justify a well-coordinated national response focused on prevention, people-centred care, and research.

phcc.org.nz

Survey research is often interpreted as showing that belief in conspiracy theories can be surprisingly widespread, including belief in conspiracy theories that would be astonishing if true. For example, in The Atlantic we learn that “12 million Americans believe lizard people run our country”

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Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

pnas.org

Scientists who use AI published 3X more papers, received 5X times more citations, and reached leadership roles faster than their AI-free peers. But science as a whole is paying the price. AI-driven work circles the same crowded problems, are leads to a less interconnected scientific literature

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What drives people's views on public health measures? I’ll be digging into this thanks to a Mana Tūānuku Research Leader Fellowship from the Royal Society Te Apārangi. Huge thanks to everyone who has backed me on this journey. I’m excited for what comes next www.royalsociety.org.nz/news/2025-ma...

2025: Outstanding scholars awarded Mana Tūānuku Research Leader Fellowships

The Royal Society Te Apārangi has selected 12 mid-career researchers to receive Mana Tūānuku Research Leader Fellowships in 2025.

royalsociety.org.nz

tldr: we found very limited evidence for distress subsequently increasing belief in conspiracy theories using a longitudinal survey sampling participants 7 times over ~6 months - and no evidence for belief in conspiracy theories worsening distress over time

New research challenges the idea of a ‘vicious cycle’ between psychological distress and conspiracy beliefs

One prominent theory says conspiracy beliefs are triggered by elevated distress. But a new study finds limited evidence to support this claim.

theconversation.com

This is a nice write-up of our recent paper by PsyPost, with clear info about limitations and small effect sizes. I would like to clarify that I am not in fact the person in the photo, though doi.org/10.1002/ejsp...

Does Developing a Belief in One Conspiracy Theory Lead a Person to be More Likely to Believe in Others?

The monological belief system model suggests that—for at least a subset of people—developing a belief in one conspiracy theory will cause them to be more likely to believe in others. This model has b...

doi.org

Timothy Caulfield@caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Research supports “rabbit hole” model of conspiratorial thinking www.psypost.org/new-research... @psypost.bsky.social "...believing in one conspiracy theory can slightly increase the likelihood of believing in others..." "...people may develop interconnected systems of conspiratorial thinking..."

'A tendency to feel victimized predicts believing in conspiracies.' That’s the TL;DR from @marlephie.bsky.social’s great summary of new research below. Backed by a huge amount of work and international data. Grateful to have been part of this excellent study. 👍

Marlene Altenmüller@marlephie.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨 Fresh off the press 🚨 Our #TISP spin-off paper on the relationship between #ConspiracyBeliefs and individual #victimhood is now out! doi.org/10.1002/ejsp... 1/8 🧵

haven't posted in a while, so here goes. recently had the opportunity to peer-review a thoughtful piece about autonomy and health-misinformation and #conspiracytheories (see here: linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii...) & write a commentary on it (see below or authors.elsevier.com/a/1lPXr2dv7n...)

Patient autonomy in decision-making is more than individual belief: Understanding why health misinformation and conspiracy theories are so appealing

sciencedirect.com

Nice to see the work of the Science Media Centres highlighted by NBR review of Fox's book. But disagree with the reviewer on one point, NZ's @smcnz.bsky.social has in fact grown in scope and size, and is all the more important given fewer specialist reporters. www.nbr.co.nz/book-review/...

Front page frenzy: From Frankenfood to Covid-19 - NBR | The Authority since 1970

The National Business Review Online is New Zealand's authority in breaking business news and analysis.

nbr.co.nz