The writer is a science commentatorAs soon as the White House press conference was over, the panic began. Responding to Donald Trump’s suggestion in April 2020 that injecting disinfectant might rid the lungs of coronavirus, Dettol manufacturer Reckitt, formerly Reckitt-Benckiser, immediately issued a statement clarifying that “under no circumstance should our disinfectants be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)”. 

The former US president has also described climate change as a hoax, falsely linked vaccines to autism and championed unproven medicines to treat coronavirus. And yet, remarkably, amid all the guff, Trump appears to have been an unwitting ambassador for science. A new study suggests that, over his presidential term, the percentage of Americans trusting scientific expertise rose.  

That feels both surprising and heartening. While there is evidence that pseudoscience and conspiracy theories can drive people towards unevidenced or dangerous beliefs, we hear much less about how and why those same influences might push others in the opposite direction. The research, published recently in the journal Science and Public Policy, suggests that scientific misinformation and disinformation does indeed move the dial: not by turning everyone into disbelievers but by jolting them out of a zone of indifference and seemingly turning them into either uber-sceptics or superfans.