Nature honestly (and slightly brutally) examines its own shortcomings as a political advocate in a study that found the scientific journal’s 2020 endorsement of Joe Biden didn’t really bring in any votes. Intstead, it caused some readers to lose confidence in Nature and in US scientists generally:
In a preregistered experiment conducted in late July and early August 2021, Floyd Zhang randomly assigned 4,260 US participants to receive either a message summarizing Nature’s endorsement of Joe Biden followed by a screenshot and link to the piece, or a control message, screenshot and link regarding Nature’s announcement of its new visual designs for its website and print copies.
The author found that the endorsement message was associated with reductions in stated trust in Nature among supporters of Trump. When prompted to acquire information about emerging COVID-19 variants and vaccine efficacy, those Trump supporters who had received information about the endorsement were 38% less likely than those in the control group to access stories from Nature’s website. The endorsement also reduced the trust of Trump supporters in US scientists in general. Biden supporters’ trust in Nature and scientists were not reliably affected by the endorsement. There was also little evidence that the endorsement changed the views of participants about Biden and Trump.