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Reply to: Corrections are effective for science misinformation

Nature Human Behaviour volume 9, pages 2461–2470 (2025)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 06 October 2025

replying to L. H. Butler et al. Nature Human Behaviour https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02245-y (2025)

In our meta-analysis1, we investigated how misinformation, correction and recipient factors affect the impact of corrective information. We combined the results from studies of different correction approaches (that is, belief updating, belief perseverance, debunking, correction and continued influence) to draw conclusions about the efficacy of debunking to science-relevant misinformation, finding that attempts to debunk are, on average, not successful, and tend to be less effective than in other fields. In Butler er al.’s response to our study, they2 state that “the reported null effect was due to the inappropriate pooling of two distinct effect types into a single estimate”. Here we explain our reasons for integrating effect sizes and re-evaluate how our results have been reported in the literature.

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Fig. 1: Funnel plots of the effect sizes obtained in the meta-analysis.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Man-pui Sally Chan & Dolores Albarracin

  2. Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Man-pui Sally Chan & Dolores Albarracin

  3. School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Dolores Albarracin

  4. School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Dolores Albarracin

  5. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Dolores Albarracin

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  1. Man-pui Sally Chan
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  2. Dolores Albarracin
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M.S.C. and D.A. wrote the original draft of the manuscript and reviewed and edited the final version.

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Correspondence to Man-pui Sally Chan.

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Chan, Mp.S., Albarracin, D. Reply to: Corrections are effective for science misinformation. Nat Hum Behav 9, 2461–2470 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02265-8

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