The "Gateway Belief" illusion: Reanalyzing the results of a scientific-consensus messaging study

Abstract

This paper analyzes data collected but not reported in the study featured in van der Linden, Leiserowitz, Feinberg, and Maibach [2015]. VLFM report finding that a "scientific consensus" message "increased" experiment subjects' "key beliefs about climate change" and "in turn" their "support for public action" to mitigate it. However, VLFM fail to report that message-exposed subjects' "beliefs about climate change" and "support for public action" did not vary significantly, in statistical or practical terms, from those of a message-unexposed control group. The paper also shows how this absence of an experimental effect was obscured by a misspecified structural equation model.