In response to recommendations to redefine statistical significance to p ≤ .005, we propose that researchers should transparently report and justify all choices they make when designing a study, including the alpha level.

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It is often assumed that issue advocacy will compromise the credibility of scientists. We conducted a randomized controlled experiment to test public reactions to six different advocacy statements made by a scientist -ranging from a purely informational statement to an endorsement of specific policies. We found that perceived credibility of the communicating scientist was uniformly high in five of the six message conditions, suffering only when he advocated for a specific policybuilding more nuclear power plants (although credibility did not suffer when advocating for a different specific policy-carbon dioxide limits at power plants). We also found no significant differences in trust in the broader climate science community between the six message conditions. Our results suggest that climate scientists who wish to engage in certain forms of advocacy have considerable latitude to do so without risking harm to their credibility, or the credibility of the scientific community. ARTICLE HISTORY

In this article, we focus on a key strategic objective of scientific organizations: maintaining the trust of the public. Using data from a nationally representative survey of American adults ( n = 1510), we assess the extent to which demographic factors and political ideology are associated with citizens' trust in general science and climate science research conducted by US federal agencies. Finally, we test whether priming individuals to first consider agencies' general science research influences trust in their climate science research, and vice versa. We found that federal agencies' general science research is more trusted than their climate science research-although a large minority of respondents did not have an opinion-and that political ideology has a strong influence on public trust in federal scientific research. We also found that priming participants to consider general scientific research does not increase trust in climate scientific research. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

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