John Kerr

As experts propose a new public institute to guide AI policy, national survey findings show high concern among Māori and Asian people about how their data is used.

New survey data on Kiwis' perceptions of AI: most are worried about the risks, even as many expect to use it. Top concern: "AI-generated images, videos or audio used to deceive or harm people." theconversation.com/most-new-zea...

How does undue commercial influence affect health in #Aotearoa? From tobacco to housing, commercial interests can put private interests ahead of health, equity & the environment. Two new PHCC Briefings explore the harms and solutions. Links 👇

Will science communication save us? peterkdearden.substack.com/p/on-science...

Athletes, influencers, and podcast hosts have more regular opportunities to build rapport with audiences than scientific experts and public health officials do – and that is part of how they earn trust.

Social media discourse is driven by false #polarization We find that: 1) ideologues post opinions more than moderates 2) extreme attitudes are posted more than moderate one 3) This replicates in 40 countries 4) Opinions that users post are more hostile than the beliefs they keep to themselves

🧵 Thread: Does the internet threaten democracy? I argue that it does in my latest piece in Science: doi.org/10.1126/scie... Here's the short version. 1/9 1/10

More than 400,000 New Zealanders have experienced Long Covid and nearly half are still symptomatic. Long Covid is a stark reminder of the pandemic’s persistence with real and ongoing health, social, and economic impacts. So where is the government response? www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/lon...

Survey research is often interpreted as showing that belief in conspiracy theories can be surprisingly widespread, including belief in conspiracy theories that would be astonishing if true. For example, in The Atlantic we learn that “12 million Americans believe lizard people run our country”

Social media giants found liable for harming a child – Expert Reaction www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2026/03/26/s...

Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Want to work at the interface of science and journalism - helping make complex topics accessible to the public of Aotearoa New Zealand? Then check out our new job opening here: www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2026/01/27/w...

Scientists who use AI published 3X more papers, received 5X times more citations, and reached leadership roles faster than their AI-free peers. But science as a whole is paying the price. AI-driven work circles the same crowded problems, are leads to a less interconnected scientific literature

What drives people's views on public health measures? I’ll be digging into this thanks to a Mana Tūānuku Research Leader Fellowship from the Royal Society Te Apārangi. Huge thanks to everyone who has backed me on this journey. I’m excited for what comes next www.royalsociety.org.nz/news/2025-ma...

Common left-right political scale masks anti-establishment views at the center

Rate your score on Factor Fexcectorn. Well done, Scientific Reports. pubpeer.com/publications...

Extremely pleased to see this work published! Thank you so much to my excellent collaborators @fmsmallfield.bsky.social @scicomguy.bsky.social @srhastraea.bsky.social @lingtax.bsky.social @mdmarques.com @matthewmatix.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Published today: One of the biggest #science #communication studies to date. We asked 71,922 people in 68 countries how they #engage with information about #science and combined the data with several country-level factors: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... #OpenAccess

tldr: we found very limited evidence for distress subsequently increasing belief in conspiracy theories using a longitudinal survey sampling participants 7 times over ~6 months - and no evidence for belief in conspiracy theories worsening distress over time

No access ⛔ New report documents the difficulty for researchers to get access to social media data. The access challenge has multiple effects, such as turning away from studying some platforms, redesigning studies, and fears of violating terms of service. www.digmin.dk/Media/638923...

This is a nice write-up of our recent paper by PsyPost, with clear info about limitations and small effect sizes. I would like to clarify that I am not in fact the person in the photo, though doi.org/10.1002/ejsp...

'A tendency to feel victimized predicts believing in conspiracies.' That’s the TL;DR from @marlephie.bsky.social’s great summary of new research below. Backed by a huge amount of work and international data. Grateful to have been part of this excellent study. 👍

Conspiracies emerge in the wake of high-profile events, but you can’t debunk them with evidence because little yet exists. Does this mean LLMs can’t debunk conspiracies during ongoing events? No! We show they can in a new working paper. PDF: osf.io/preprints/ps...

I had a great chat with @comingupcharlie.bsky.social about why some people reject germ theory in favour of alternative views like ‘terrain theory’, and make a brief appearance in this deep dive into the NZ influencers promoting these ideas. Well worth a read. 👇

Nice to see the work of the Science Media Centres highlighted by NBR review of Fox's book. But disagree with the reviewer on one point, NZ's @smcnz.bsky.social has in fact grown in scope and size, and is all the more important given fewer specialist reporters. www.nbr.co.nz/book-review/...

“There’s no money” isn’t economics, it’s accounting. A real Budget debate asks: are we investing our limited resources in what truly matters for future generations? #NZBudget #PublicHealth @ganeshahirao.bsky.social www.phcc.org.nz/briefing/soc...

Trust is a super power. Climate scientists are trusted globally, just not as much as other scientists. Check out this excellent summary of our latest research that explores the reasons why: theconversation.com/climate-scie... @mason4c.bsky.social @omidghasemi.bsky.social

We are delighted to share the publication of Risky Research: An AoIR Guide to Researcher Protection and Safety, the culmination of over two years of collaborative effort by the AoIR Risky Research Working Group. aoir.org/riskyresearc...

It's often claimed that developing a belief in one conspiracy theory will increase the chance that someone goes on to believe other conspiracy theories... perhaps leading them down a rabbit hole of conspiracist beliefs. But does that really happen? doi.org/10.1002/ejsp...

Does microtargeting work? The idea that people can be manipulated by political messages that are furtively tailored to their personality or other vulnerabilities has triggered much concern. But how well founded are those concerns? 1/n

🚨OpEd+data: Meta is out of step with public opinion🚨 Zuck cut moderation b/c he said people no longer want it. But he's wrong! We polled 1k Americans and most people, including majority of Reps: i) want content moderation ii) don't want Community Notes w/o fact-checkers thehill.com/opinion/tech...

The spread of misinformation and disinformation top the WEF short-term global risk report for 2025. www.weforum.org/publications...

New open-access paper in Annual Review of Psychology with @mjbsp.bsky.social: “Ideology: Psychological Similarities and Differences Across the Ideological Spectrum Reexamined” www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Now publicly available: the #TISP dataset. It contains 71,922 survey responses on public perceptions of science, science communication, and climate change attitudes in 68 countries. Published in @natureportfolio.bsky.social’s #ScientificData: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 📊

Fantastic to see findings of this mammoth project published. Many, many useful insights into how the world sees scientists. Congrats to lead researchers @nielsmede.bsky.social‬ & @colognaviktoria.bsky.social‬. + Thanks to @mdmarques.com for the opportunity to be involved.