A darkening spring: How preexisting distrust shaped COVID-19 skepticism

J. Hunter Priniski; Keith J. Holyoak

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0263191

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionSeptember 3, 2021
22 Dec 2021 Decision Letter - Camelia Delcea, Editor PONE-D-21-28659A Darkening Spring: How Preexisting Distrust Shaped COVID-19 SkepticismPLOS ONE Dear Dr. PRINISKI, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please revise the paper according to the reviewers' comments. Please try to provide more insight on the methodology used in the paper. Please submit your revised manuscript by Feb 05 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Camelia Delcea Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. 3. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: Preparation of this paper was supported by NSF Grant BCS-1827374. Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: Preparation of this paper was supported by NSF Grant BCS-1827374. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: Preparation of this paper was supported by NSF Grant BCS-1827374. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 5. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. 6. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. 7. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The paper deals with a very important and actual topic. There are just a few comments/suggestions that I would like to make: 1. clarify the number of scales used in pre-wave (6 in text, 7 in table) 2. recheck the numbering of figures and their reference in text (figure 1 appears twice) 3. recheck the interpretation of the skewness (left, right) for democrats vs. republicans for all distributions 4. check for multicollinearity prior to presenting CI 5. recheck the interpretation of correlation coefficients (r=.43 is moderate, not strong) 6. consistent use of the same variable names in each figure/table/ text (eg. democrat distrust and democrat hoax, political attitude and conservative politics). If they refer to different variables, please explain the differences. Overall, this paper can be viewed as a good presentation of the insights of the skeptical attitude regarding covid. Reviewer #2: The contribution of the current paper is not sufficient for publication in this journal . Thus, I have decided to reject the paper "A Darkening Spring: How Preexisting Distrust Shaped COVID-19 Skepticism". Reviewer #3: Solid work. Would have liked additional comments on the development of the framework and specifics to address potential new narratives as to inform better policy that takes into account the insights provided for future issues. Reviewer #4: Your manuscript was well thought out, clear and provides important information that helps explains the current beliefs about COVID. The introduction provided a good context on the topic. The method on what was done was clear and well designed. The results showed what attitudes were related and how that led to current belief systems about COVID. The figures and tables added a needed component to help explain what was discovered. The conclusion was appropriate based on the results. I recommend your paper for publication. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: Yes: José Bayoán Santiago Calderón Reviewer #4: Yes:** Jill A. Yamashita [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263191.r001
Revision 1
12 Jan 2022 Author Response Response to Reviewers Hunter Priniski Keith Holyoak We thank the reviewers for their careful comments and address each point below. Journal Requirements 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Completed 2. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. In the ethics statement in the Methods and online submission information, please ensure that you have specified what type you obtained (for instance, written or verbal, and if verbal, how it was documented and witnessed). If your study included minors, state whether you obtained consent from parents or guardians. If the need for consent was waived by the ethics committee, please include this information. We added the following Ethics Statement subsection to our Methods section: Ethics Statement The Institutional Review Board of the University of California, Los Angeles, approved our study, and written consent was received for each participant. All participants were over 18 years of age. Preparation of this paper was supported by NSF Grant BCS-1827374. Please state what role the funders took in the study: The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. This info was added to our Acknowledgements section, which now reads: The funders of this study had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: Preparation of this paper was supported by NSF Grant BCS-1827374. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: Preparation of this paper was supported by NSF Grant BCS-1827374. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Funding details have been removed: see revised Acknowledgement above. 5. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. Our data and analysis scripts are hosted publicly on the Open Science Framework. As one reviewer seems to have a tough time locating these files, we included a link to them in our Results section. 6. Please include your full ethics statement in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript file. In your statement, please include the full name of the IRB or ethics committee who approved or waived your study, as well as whether or not you obtained informed written or verbal consent. If consent was waived for your study, please include this information in your statement as well. We added an Ethics subsection to the Materials. See response to point 2 above. 7. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. We did some small editing to the reference list for style. No references were added or removed. Reviewer Comments Reviewer #1: We thank Reviewer #1 for their careful read of the manuscript. We individually address each point they raised below. 1. clarify the number of scales used in pre-wave (6 in text, 7 in table) We reported the wrong number in the original text. We updated the numbers, so they match. 2. recheck the numbering of figures and their reference in text (figure 1 appears twice) We updated the figure counts. 3. recheck the interpretation of the skewness (left, right) for democrats vs. republicans for all distributions We made these changes in the manuscript. And thank the reviewer for their careful eye. 4. check for multicollinearity prior to presenting CI The predictors will be strongly correlated by design as correlations between predictors is necessary to measure coherence. We thank the reviewer for raising concerns about the potential for a high degree of collinearity between the predictors which may undermine results. In Bayesian linear models, collinearity between predictors results in flat (uninformative) posteriors estimates, even if one of the predictors in fact is predictive. More information about Multicollinearity in posterior distributions of Bayesian multiple regression models can be found in R. McElreath’s textbook on Bayesian Modeling, Statistical Rethinking (pp. 141-142). As we saw in the full model, the posteriors of the predictors are not flat but rather informative, therefore alleviating concerns of collinearity between predictors. We added a justification for this in the manuscript before reporting the results. 5. recheck the interpretation of correlation coefficients (r=.43 is moderate, not strong) We updated our interpretations of the correlation coefficients such that they mirror conventional nomenclature. 6. consistent use of the same variable names in each figure/table/ text (eg. democrat distrust and democrat hoax, political attitude and conservative politics). If they refer to different variables, please explain the differences. The variable names were updated in both Figure 4 and 10, where we used conservative politics as a label for Political Attitudes. We changed both labels to Political Attitudes. We also fixed the labeling error in Figure 10 where we used Democratic Hoax rather than Democrat Distrust. This was fixed as well. Reviewer #2: no suggestions for revision The contribution of the current paper is not sufficient for publication in this journal. Thus, I have decided to reject the paper "A Darkening Spring: How Preexisting Distrust Shaped COVID-19 Skepticism". Reviewer #3: Solid work. Would have liked additional comments on the development of the framework and specifics to address potential new narratives as to inform better policy that takes into account the insights provided for future issues. We added a suggestion in the discussion regarding how we believe a coherence mechanism will also be at play in future pandemics. Therefore, large medical organizations should be prompt in addressing these coherence-based connections between science and distrust. Reviewer #4: no suggestions for revision Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263191.r002
14 Jan 2022 Decision Letter - Camelia Delcea, Editor A Darkening Spring: How Preexisting Distrust Shaped COVID-19 Skepticism PONE-D-21-28659R1 Dear Dr. PRINISKI, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Camelia Delcea Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263191.r003
Formally Accepted
17 Jan 2022 Acceptance Letter - Camelia Delcea, Editor PONE-D-21-28659R1 A Darkening Spring: How Preexisting Distrust Shaped COVID-19 Skepticism Dear Dr. Priniski: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Camelia Delcea Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263191.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .