The effects of quality of evidence communication on perception of public health information about COVID-19: Two randomised controlled trials.
Claudia R SchneiderAlexandra L J FreemanDavid SpiegelhalterSander van der LindenPublished in: PloS one (2021)
Without quality of evidence cues, participants responded to the evidence about the public health intervention as if it was high quality and this affected their subjective perceptions of its efficacy and trust in the provided information. This raises the ethical dilemma of weighing the importance of transparently stating when the evidence base is actually low quality against evidence that providing such information can decrease trust, perception of intervention efficacy, and likelihood of adopting it.