Authority Brings Responsibility: Feedback from Experts Promotes an Overweighting of Health-Related Pseudoscientific Beliefs

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The issue is of the upmost significance from a public health point of view. In spite of this, it has not received enough attention from researchers.

This study opens the door for further research in this area given the complexity of factors influencing beliefs, affect, behaviour and action of people coping with health related issues.

I suggest the authors to highlight this complexity in the discussion and the conclusion sections.

The key conclusions driven from the study results may be used and adapted for their application in specific  contexts:

- various population groups ( from  different cultures, socio economic conditions, demographic characteristics...)

- gaps between health information and health education

- epidemiological complexity of diverse health problems ( in particular epidemics versus long term chronic phenomena)

- communication channels, instruments and technologies of modern multi media, in particular un controlled social networks

This comment may seem to be very broad and difficult to handle with studies but policy makers are quite challenged  in their day-to day life with pseudo scientific information around very specific health or medical related issues

 

 

Author Response

Response to reviewers’ comments:

We thank all the reviewers for their helpful comments and believe the manuscript has improved as a result of the changes made. Throughout this letter, responses to comments are written in bold. Any additions to the manuscript have been written using the track changes option in the Word document.

Reviewer's comments:

The issue is of the upmost significance from a public health point of view. In spite of this, it has not received enough attention from researchers.

This study opens the door for further research in this area given the complexity of factors influencing beliefs, affect, behaviour and action of people coping with health related issues.

I suggest the authors to highlight this complexity in the discussion and the conclusion sections.

The key conclusions driven from the study results may be used and adapted for their application in specific contexts:

- various population groups ( from  different cultures, socio economic conditions, demographic characteristics...)

- gaps between health information and health education

- epidemiological complexity of diverse health problems ( in particular epidemics versus long term chronic phenomena)

- communication channels, instruments and technologies of modern multi media, in particular un controlled social networks

This comment may seem to be very broad and difficult to handle with studies but policy makers are quite challenged  in their day-to day life with pseudo scientific information around very specific health or medical related issues

We are grateful for the reviewer's comments and suggestions. We have taken the general suggestion to connect our results and arguments to the topics suggested by the reviewer. In this sense, in the current version of the manuscript, the reviewer will find further elaboration on these topics (lines 352 to 354, 356 to 365, 373 to 384, and 392 to 396) together with their corresponding references. We believe that the careful incorporation of these topics into the initial structure of the discussion we have carried out will be useful and interesting to a wider readership. We are grateful for the reviewer's indications in this respect.

Reviewer 2 Report

You should improve the explanation for the method you choose the sample

You also may explain how you do the procedure to stimulate the groups

The discuss should by more ritch in bibliography, The last two paragraphs almost don't have references that the peers are doing

The conclusions are too poor  

Author Response

Response to reviewers’ comments:

We thank all the reviewers for their helpful comments and believe the manuscript has improved as a result of the changes made. Throughout this letter, responses to comments are written in bold. Any additions to the manuscript have been written using the track changes option in the word document.

Reviewer's comments and responses:

You should improve the explanation for the method you choose the sample

We appreciate this observation. This information has been added in the methods section. (lines 131 to 134)

You also may explain how you do the procedure to stimulate the groups

We are not sure if we have understood the reviewer's suggestion correctly. In particular, we do not know whether it refers to the method of group formation or to the manipulation of feedback. Consequently, we have added explanations in both directions. For group formation (lines 137-138) and for feedback generation (lines 216-219).

The discuss should by more ritch in bibliography, The last two paragraphs almost don't have references that the peers are doing. The conclusions are too poor.

We appreciate these suggestions and we have taken them into serious consideration. We respond jointly to the two reviewer's requests since the discussion and conclusions are interconnected. In the new version of the manuscript, we have added several further elaborations on the implications of the phenomenon found in the present study. All of them are related to crucial issues such as the spread of misinformation, the potential variability of the effects found in different populations, and the dangers of new technologies as sources of transmission, among others (lines 352 to 354, 356 to 365, 373 to 384 and 392 to 396). Additionally, we have added 9 references next to the added text. We have added a short summary of these additional considerations in the conclusion section, which is intended to be brief and to highlight the most important issues raised in the discussion.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The changes improved the article.