Why people think they’re right, even when they are wrong

Study finds people may incorrectly believe they have all the facts

Ohio State University

COLUMBUS, Ohio – If you smugly believe you’re right in a disagreement with a friend or colleague, a new study suggests why you may actually be wrong.

 

Researchers found that people naturally assume they have all the information they need to make a decision or support their position, even when they do not.

The researchers called it the “illusion of information adequacy.”

“We found that, in general, people don’t stop to think whether there might be more information that would help them make a more informed decision,” said study co-author Angus Fletcher, a professor of English at The Ohio State University and member of the university’s Project Narrative.

“If you give people a few pieces of information that seems to line up, most will say ‘that sounds about right’ and go with that.”

The study was published today in the journal PLOS ONE. Fletcher completed the work with co-authors Hunter Gehlbach, an educational psychologist at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Education, and Carly Robinson, a senior researcher at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education

The study involved 1,261 Americans who participated online. 

They were split into three groups who read an article about a fictional school that lacked adequate water. One group read an article that only gave reasons why the school should merge with another that had adequate water; a second group’s article only gave reasons for staying separate and hoping for other solutions; and the third control group read all the arguments for the schools merging and for staying separate.

The findings showed that the two groups who read only half the story – either just the pro-merging or the just the anti-merging arguments – still believed they had enough information to make a good decision, Fletcher said.  Most of them said they would follow the recommendations in the article they read.

“Those with only half the information were actually more confident in their decision to merge or remain separate than those who had the complete story,” Fletcher said.

“They were quite sure that their decision was the right one, even though they didn’t have all the information.”

In addition, participants who had half the information said that they thought that most other people would make the same decision they did.

There was one piece of good news from the study, Fletcher said. Some of the participants who had read only one side of the story later read the arguments for the other side. And many of those participants were willing to change their minds about their decision, once they had all the facts.

That may not work all the time, especially on entrenched ideological issues, he said.  In those cases, people may not trust new information, or they may try to reframe it to fit their preexisting views.

“But most interpersonal conflicts aren’t about ideology. They are just misunderstandings in the course of daily life,” Fletcher said.

These findings offer a complement to research on what is called naïve realism, the belief people have that their subjective understanding of a situation is the objective truth, Fletcher explained.  Research on naïve realism often focuses on how people have different understandings of the same situation.

But the illusion of information adequacy shows that people may share the same understanding – if they both have enough information.

Fletcher, who studies how people are influenced by the power of stories, said people should make sure they have the full story about a situation before they take a stand or make a decision.

“As we found in this study, there’s this default mode in which people think they know all the relevant facts, even if they don’t,” he said.

“Your first move when you disagree with someone should be to think, ‘Is there something that I’m missing that would help me see their perspective and understand their position better?’ That’s the way to fight this illusion of information adequacy.”

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Journal

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0310216 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

The illusion of information adequacy

Article Publication Date

9-Oct-2024

Neglecting “unknown unknowns” may influence decision-making

Study proposes a new bias: the tendency to assume one has adequate information to make a decision

PLOS

 

image: 

The authors suggest that the ability to navigate other perspectives might be improved by encouraging people to consider whether they may be lacking key information.

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Credit: geralt, Pixabay, CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

New experimental data support the idea that people tend to assume the information they have is adequate to comprehend a given situation, without considering that they might be lacking key information. Hunter Gehlbach of Johns Hopkins University and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 9, 2024.

When navigating alternative perspectives, people may demonstrate psychological biases that influence their ability to understand others’ viewpoints. For instance, in the bias of naïve realism, people presume their own subjective perspective is objective truth.

Gehlbach and colleagues now propose the existence of a related bias, which they call the illusion of information adequacy: the failure to consider the possibility that one might be missing key information. For instance, one driver might honk at a car stopped in front of them, only to then see a pedestrian crossing the road—a possibility they hadn’t considered.

To demonstrate the illusion of information adequacy, the researchers presented 1,261 study participants with a hypothetical scenario in which they had to recommend whether two schools should be merged or not, as well as answer questions about their perceptions. Some participants received information about the benefits of merging, some about the benefits of staying separate, and some about both.

In line with the illusion of information adequacy, participants who—unbeknownst to them—lacked either the pro-merge or the pro-separate information tended to assume that the information they had was just as adequate as others’ information, that they were just as well equipped to make a thoughtful recommendation, and that most others would make a similar decision. Indeed, people lacking pro-merge information tended to recommend the schools remain separate, and vice versa.

Notably, a subgroup of participants who later received the information they initially lacked tended to stick with their original decisions. However, this subgroup’s combined final recommendations did mirror the recommendations of the subgroup that initially received all the information.

The authors suggest that the ability to navigate other perspectives might be improved by encouraging people to consider whether they may be lacking key information. Meanwhile, additional research could deepen understanding of this type of bias.

The authors add: “A major source of misunderstanding and conflict in our daily lives arises from this paradox: We know that, in theory, there are plenty of things that we don't know we don't know. Yet, in practice, we almost always behave as though we have adequate information to voice our opinions, make good decisions, and pass judgment on others. A little more intellectual humility about what we do and don't know would serve us well.”

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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0310216

Citation: Gehlbach H, Robinson CD, Fletcher A (2024) The illusion of information adequacy. PLoS ONE 19(10): e0310216. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310216

Author Countries: U.S.A.

Funding: Dr. Hunter Gehlbach received start-up funds from Johns Hopkins University School of Education. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Journal

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0310216 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

The illusion of information adequacy

Article Publication Date

9-Oct-2024

Are ideas contagious?

University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

The COVID-19 pandemic gave the global medical community the opportunity to take giant strides forward in understanding how to develop vaccines and implement public health measures designed to control the spread of disease, but the crisis also offered researchers the chance to learn more about another kind of contagion: ideas. 

Mathematician and assistant professor of biology Nicholas Landry, an expert in the study of contagion, is exploring how the structure of human-interaction networks affect the spread of both illness and information with the aim of understanding the role social connections play in not only the transmission of disease but also the spread of ideas and ideology.

In a paper published this fall in Physical Review E with collaborators at the University of Vermont, Landry explores a hybrid approach to understanding social networks that involves inferring not just social contacts but also the rules that govern how contagion and information spread.

“With the pandemic, we have more data than we’ve ever had on diseases,” Landry said.  “The question is, What can we do with that data and how much data do you need to figure out how people are connected?”

The key to making use of the data, Landry explained, is to understand their limitations and understand how much confidence we can have when using epidemic models to make predictions.

Landry’s findings suggest that reconstructing underlying social networks and their impacts on contagion is much more feasible for diseases like SARS-CoV-2, Mpox or rhinovirus but may be less effective in understanding how more highly infectious diseases like measles or chickenpox spread.

However, for extremely viral trends or information, Landry suggests it may be possible to track how they spread with more precision than we can achieve for diseases, a discovery that will better inform future efforts to understand the pathways of both contagion and misinformation.

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Journal

Physical Review E

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevE.110.L042301 

Article Title

Reconstructing networks from simple and complex contagions

Article Publication Date

7-Oct-2024

 

Predatory birds from the same fossil formation as SUE the T. rex

Unusual foot bones suggest that the newly-discovered species may have hunted like modern hawks and owls

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Field Museum

 

image: 

The three fossil specimens (from left to right), Avisaurus darwini, Avisaurus sp., and Magnusavis ekalakaensis, all of which are represented by a tarsometatarsus. They are all shown to scale with one another. 

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Credit: Alex Clark

The Hell Creek Formation in what’s now the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming was once home to some of the world’s most beloved dinosaurs, like Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex (including SUE, one of the largest, most complete, and best-preserved T. rex specimens ever found). But these giant dinosaurs weren’t alone in their ecosystem, and in a paper in the journal PLOS ONE, scientists have described two new species of birds that lived alongside these dinosaurs 68 million years ago. The researchers were able to name these new species from just one bone each: the powerful foot bone that suggests these birds could have captured and carried off prey.

“Based on clues in their foot bones, we think these birds would have been able to catch and carry prey, similar to what a modern hawk or owl does,” says Alex Clark, a PhD student at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago and the study’s lead author. “While they might not be the first birds of prey to ever evolve, their fossils are the earliest known examples of predatory birds.”

The three fossils Clark studied in this paper had been collected in the past several years by researchers at other institutions, but there hadn’t been much work done on them. Clark recalls that when he first saw the fossils, they weren’t especially dazzling-- they were all a foot bone that the toes attach to, called the tarsometatarsus, and they’d been found on their own, without other, flashier body parts like skulls and claws. And while the bones were large for bird tarsometatarsi, they were still only about the size of an adult human thumb.  However, these isolated bones proved to be a treasure trove of information.

“Every nook and cranny and bump that occurs on a bone can tell us something about where the muscles or tendons attached and how big they were,” says Clark. On these bones, there was an especially noteworthy bump-- a muscle attachment point called a tubercle. On each bone, it was larger and farther down than in most birds. “When we see tubercles this large and this far down in modern birds, they're in birds of prey like owls and hawks,” says Clark. “That’s because when they hunt and pick up their prey with their feet, they're lifting proportionally heavy things and holding them close to their bodies to stay as aerodynamically efficient as possible. These fossil ankle bones look like they're built to do something similar.”

Clark and his colleagues conducted a series of biomechanical analyses comparing the fossil foot bones to those of a variety of modern birds. “The muscles and bone of the ankle work like a lever, and by comparing how far down on the bone the muscle attaches, we can get a good idea of how it would have moved and how strong it would have been,” says Clark. The math corroborated the researchers’ hypothesis that these feet would have been strong enough for these hawk-sized  birds to pick up small mammals and even baby dinosaurs.

From the three foot bones, Clark and his team described two new species to science: Avisaurus darwini, after Charles Darwin, and Magnusavis ekalakaenis, in honor of the town of Ekalaka, Montana, where the fossil was found. (The third bone may be another new species, but the fossil’s degraded condition made it difficult to tell for sure.) All of these birds are part of a group called the avisaurids. They belong to a larger group of birds called the enantiornithines, which went extinct with most of their fellow dinosaurs when the asteroid hit 66 million years ago.

“These discoveries have effectively doubled the number of bird species known from the Hell Creek Formation and will be critical for helping us to better understand why only some birds survived the mass extinction that wiped out T. rex and the avisaurids described here,” Jingmai O’Connor, the Field Museum’s associate curator of fossil reptiles in the Negaunee Integrative Research Center, Clark’s advisor, and a co-author of the paper.

“​​'I’m really proud and very impressed with what Alex was able to do with these specimens. They're each just a single bone. But he brings his background as an ecologist into his paleontological work to tell more than the average paleontologist about what an animal’s life would have been like,” says O’Connor. “Alex has done a superb job with being able to extract so much incredible ecological information from just a single bone.”

An illustration of the newly described Avisaurus darwini, whose unusual foot bones indicate that it was one of the earliest birds of prey known to science, shown here carrying a small mammal.

Credit

Illustration by Ville Sinkkonen

Lead author Alex Clark with the fossil foot bone of Avisaurus darwini, with SUE the T. rex, a fellow Hell Creek fossil, in the background.

Credit

Photo by Kate Golembiewski, Field Museum.

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Journal

PLoS ONE

Article Title

New enantiornithine diversity in the Hell Creek Formation and the functional morphology of the avisaurid tarsometatarsus

Article Publication Date

9-Oct-2024

Newly discovered Late Cretaceous birds may have carried heavy prey like extant raptors

New fossil species reveal diverse body sizes and lifestyles of birds before mass extinction

PLOS

 

image: 

Reconstruction of an avisaurid (e.g., A. darwini). Morphology of the tarsometatarsus suggests that these large birds engaged in raptorial behavior and could carry proportionally large prey. Illustration done by Ville Sinkkonen.

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Credit: Clark et al., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Newly discovered ancient birds from Late Cretaceous North America were hawk-sized and had powerful raptor-like feet, according to a study published October 9, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Alexander Clark of the University of Chicago, U.S. and colleagues.

The most diverse birds during the Cretaceous Period were a now-extinct group called enantiornithines, known from all over the world during this time. However, enantiornithines and other Mesozoic birds are mainly known from Lower Cretaceous deposits, with a relatively poor record from the Late Cretaceous. Thus, there is a general lack of understanding of trends in bird evolution toward the end of the Mesozoic Era.

In this study, Clark and colleagues describe three new enantiornithine birds from fossils found in the Hell Creek Formation of Montana, dating to the latest Cretaceous Period (68 - 66 million years ago, shortly before the mass extinction that wiped out non-avian dinosaurs and enantiornithines). All three fossil birds are identified from lower leg bones. Two are new species named Magnusavis ekalakaensis and Avisaurus darwini, while the third is an unnamed species of Avisaurus.

These birds are all larger than Early Cretaceous enantiornithines, with Avisaurus darwini estimated to have weighed over one kilogram, roughly the size of a large hawk. Analysis of the leg bones of Avisaurus and its relatives reveals proportions and adaptations similar to hawks and owls, indicating powerful leg muscles and feet that could grip and potentially carry proportionally large prey, similar to some modern raptorial birds.

These fossils expand the known diversity of Late Cretaceous birds, confirm the trend toward large body size, and highlight how, over time, enantiornithines evolved a greater diversity of ecological roles. This study emphasizes how even fragmentary fossils can reveal important ecological information and be used to clarify evolutionary trends.

The authors add: “Avisaurids, a group of enantiornithine birds from the latest Cretaceous, exhibit hindlimb features indicating strong ankle flexion, which suggests the ability to carry heavy prey and behaviors similar to living raptorial birds.”

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In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0310686

Citation: Clark AD, Atterholt J, Scannella JB, Carroll N, O’Connor JK (2024) New enantiornithine diversity in the Hell Creek Formation and the functional morphology of the avisaurid tarsometatarsus. PLoS ONE 19(10): e0310686. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310686

Author Countries: U.S.A.

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

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Journal

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0310686 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

New enantiornithine diversity in the Hell Creek Formation and the functional morphology of the avisaurid tarsometatarsus

Article Publication Date

9-Oct-2024

 

Sexist textbooks? Review of over 1200 English-language textbooks from 34 countries reveals persistent pattern of stereotypical gender roles and under-representation of female characters across countries

PLOS

 

image: 

Gender biases around male and female roles and under-representation of female characters appeared in textbooks from around the world.

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Credit: Jessica Ruscello, Unsplash, CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

Gender biases around male and female roles and under-representation of female characters appeared in textbooks from around the world, with male-coded words appearing twice as often as female-coded words on average, according to a study published October 9, 2024 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Lee Crawfurd from the Center for Global Development, United Kingdom, and colleagues.

School textbooks play an important role in shaping norms and attitudes in students—one reason why controversy over textbook content is high in many countries today. In this study, Crawfurd and colleagues investigated how gender norms are depicted in textbooks around the world.

The authors used a particularly large corpus of textbooks to conduct their analysis: 1,255 publicly available online English-language school textbooks spanning subjects and grade levels from grades 4-13 from 34 countries downloaded over 2020-2022. They compared textbook content with predefined lists of gendered nouns and pronouns (e.g. “Auntie/she/her/woman”) and investigated how often these gendered words were associated with key words used in previous studies relating to achievement, appearance, family, home, and work (e.g. “powerful/gorgeous/household/executive”) within the textbook. Finally, the authors compared their text analysis results with other measures of gender equality at the country level.

They found that on average across the full sample of textbooks, there were more than twice as many occurrences of male words (178,142) as female words (82,113), though there was considerable variation between countries. After adjusting for book length, grade, and subject, the countries with the lowest representation of women and girls were Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and South Sudan, where fewer than 1 in 3 gendered words were female.

Across all countries, the adjectives most likely to describe only female and not male characters included “married”, “beautiful”, “aged”, and “quiet”. Verbs for only female characters included “bake”, “cook,” and “sang”. The adjectives most likely to describe male and not female characters included “powerful”, “rich”, “wise”, “certain”, and “unable”. Verbs for only male characters included “rule”, “guide”, “sign”, and “order”. Almost all of the individual achievement- and work-themed words showed a stronger association with male words than female words, and the individual appearance- and home-themed words showed a stronger association with female words than male words. The authors note that countries with textbooks containing a greater number of female characters also had stronger GDPs and more legal rights for women compared to countries with less female representation, though this is only correlation and cannot speak to causation.

The authors also note there are several limitations to this work—their tool was not able to assess non-text items (such as images) and was not always correct at parsing names (though the authors used manual validation where possible), and the analysis reflects a binary view of gender illustrated in the textbooks. Furthermore, this analysis is restricted to English language literature and therefore may not be generalizable to languages beyond English. However, the results suggest that combating gender biases in textbooks could potentially lead to real-world effects.

The authors add: “Our findings reveal a troubling reality: school books are perpetuating outdated gender stereotypes. Schools should broaden horizons not limit children's potential. It's crucial for policymakers and educators to address these disparities.”

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Author Interview: https://plos.io/4dybR17

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0310366

Citation: Crawfurd L, Saintis-Miller C, Todd R (2024) Sexist textbooks: Automated analysis of gender bias in 1,255 books from 34 countries. PLoS ONE 19(10): e0310366. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0310366

Author Countries: U.K., U.S.A.

Funding: This research was supported by funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Echidna Giving. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Journal

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0310366 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Sexist textbooks: Automated analysis of gender bias in 1,255 books from 34 countries

Article Publication Date

9-Oct-2024

Interview with Lee Crawfurd, Center for Global Development, United Kingdom

Author of PLOS ONE paper "Sexist textbooks: Automated analysis of gender bias in 1,255 books from 34 countries"

PLOS

 

image: 

Lee Crawfurd

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Credit: Lee Crawfurd, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Interview with Lee Crawfurd

 

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What first drew you to study gender bias in school textbooks, and why did you choose to investigate this topic?

I was raised by a gay feminist single mother who was a school teacher and loves to challenge gender stereotypes, so this is something I've always been interested in. This personal background, combined with recent advancements in computerized text analysis and the new availability of digital textbooks, led me to this line of research.

 

What are the key findings from your research?

It's not really news that there is some gender bias in textbooks. What is new about our paper is being able to show how much bias there is, and how this compares across different countries. In some places, female representation is less than 30% of all characters in textbooks.

 

What most surprised or interested you about your findings?

One thing that really stood out to me is that there is still some bias in books being funded by the British government's aid agency, despite years of political focus on girl's education.

 

Your findings suggest that gender representation is more balanced in higher income countries, though stereotypes in textbooks remain common. Can you tell us more about the stereotypes seen in high income countries and low income countries?

Overall the stereotypes we see are similar in richer and poorer countries - male characters in books are more likely to be associated with words describing work and achievement, for example "leader" or "business". Female characters are more likely to be associated with words describing home, family, and their appearance, such as "wedding" or "slim".

 

Which countries showed highest and lowest levels of gender bias, and were there any countries that surprised you as to where they ranked?

There is really low female representation in all the large South Asian countries; India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan, which wasn't too surprising but did make for depressing reading. There were some more positive surprises at the other end, with Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Rwanda showing less bias than the British and American books we looked at.

 

Your analysis rests on a binary view of gender, but do you think your findings suggest anything about non-binary representations of gender in the countries studied?

While our analysis currently focuses on binary gender representations, the findings highlight a broader issue of stereotyped portrayals, which could also impact non-binary individuals. Future research could certainly explore this dimension.

 

What do you hope your findings might lead to, and what are the next steps for your research?

Ultimately I think this is about giving people choice and freedom. Boys and girls should be free to choose how they want to live their lives. If all they see are rigid gender roles then their options are narrowed. We hope our findings will inform textbook writers and educational policymakers to create more balanced content that broadens the horizons for both boys and girls.

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Journal

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0310366 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Sexist textbooks: Automated analysis of gender bias in 1,255 books from 34 countries

Article Publication Date

9-Oct-2024

 

Scientists show accelerating CO2 release from rocks in Arctic Canada with global warming

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Oxford

 

image: 

Landscape in the upper Peel River showing exposed bedrock on steep slopes coupled to river channels, where physical weathering is producing abundant fresh material (Credit: Robert Hilton)

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Credit: Robert Hilton

Researchers from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford have shown that weathering of rocks in the Canadian Arctic will accelerate with rising temperatures, triggering a positive feedback loop that will release more and more CO2 to the atmosphere. The findings have been published today in the journal Science Advances.

For sensitive regions like the Arctic, where surface air temperatures are warming nearly four times faster than the global average, it is particularly crucial to understand the potential contribution of atmospheric CO2 from weathering. One pathway happens when certain minerals and rocks react with oxygen in the atmosphere, releasing CO2 via a series of chemical reactions. For instance, the weathering of sulfide minerals (e.g., ‘fool’s gold’) makes acid which causes CO2 to release from other rock minerals that are found nearby. In Arctic permafrost, these minerals are being exposed as the ground thaws due to rising temperatures, which could act as a positive feedback loop to accelerate climate change.

Up to now, however, it has been largely unknown how this reaction will respond to temperature change and much extra CO2 could be released.

In this new study, researchers used records of sulfate (SO4­2-) concentration and temperature from 23 sites across the Mackenzie River Basin*, the largest river system in Canada, to examine the sensitivity of the weathering process to rising temperatures. Sulfate, like CO2, is a product of sulfide weathering, and can be used to trace how fast this process occurs.

The results demonstrated that across the catchment, sulfate concentrations rose rapidly with temperature. During the past 60 years (from 1960 to 2020), sulfide weathering saw an increase of 45% as temperatures increased by 2.3oC. This highlights that CO2 released by weathering could trigger a positive feedback loop that would accelerate warming in Arctic regions. 

Using these past records from rivers, the researchers predicted that CO2 released from the Mackenzie River Basin could double to 3 billion kg/year by 2100 under a moderate emission scenario. This change would be equivalent to about half the total annual emissions from Canada’s domestic aviation sector for a typical year.

Lead author, Dr Ella Walsh (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford at the time of the study) said: “We see dramatic increases in sulfide oxidation across the Mackenzie with even moderate warming. Until now, the temperature sensitivity of CO2 release from sulfide rocks and its main drivers were unknown over large areas and timescales.”

Not all parts of the river catchment responded in the same way. Weathering was much more sensitive to temperature in rocky mountainous areas, and those covered with permafrost. By modelling the process, the researchers revealed that sulfide weathering was accelerated further by processes which break rocks up as they freeze and shatter.

Conversely, areas covered with peatland showed lower increases in sulfide oxidation with warming, because the peat protects the bedrock from this process.

Co-author, Professor Bob Hilton (Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford) said: “Future warming across vast Arctic landscapes could further increase sulfide oxidation rates and affect regional carbon cycle budgets. Now that we have found this out, we are working to understand how these reactions might be slowed down, and it seems that peatland formation could help to lower the sulfide oxidation process.”

There are numerous similar environments across the Arctic where the combination of rock types, high proportions of exposed bedrock, and vast areas of permanently frozen ground create conditions where warming will result in rapid increases in sulfide weathering. As a result, it is extremely likely that this effect is not restricted to the Mackenzie River Basin.

According to the researchers, the study highlights the value of considering sulfide weathering in large scale emission models, which are extremely useful for making predictions of climate change.

*Records were provided by Environment Canada through their National Long-term Water Quality Monitoring Programme. Sulfate concentrations were measured using ion chromatography, where liquid samples are passed through a column filled with a resin which attracts specific ions based on their charge.

Notes to editors:

For media enquiries and interview requests, contact Dr Ella Walsh (ella.walsh@uib.no) and Prof Bob Hilton (robert.hilton@earth.ox.ac.uk).

The study ‘Temperature sensitivity of the mineral permafrost feedback at the continental scale’ will be published in Science Advances at 19:00 BST / 14:00 ET Wednesday 09 October. DOI 10.1126/sciadv.adq4893

For more information, including a copy of the paper, contact the Science Advances editorial team vancepak@aaas.org or access the Science Advances press package, VancePak, at https://www.eurekalert.org/press/vancepak/

Images relating to the study that can be used to illustrate articles are available: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Vds06H6JeiQ6V5ML4IJsi299Y0_qsxpX?usp=sharing These are for editorial purposes only and must be credited. They must NOT be sold on to third parties.

Image 1: Landscape in the upper Peel River showing exposed bedrock on steep slopes coupled to river channels, where physical weathering is producing abundant fresh material (Credit: Robert Hilton)

Image 2: Thaw slump on the Peel Plateau, which exposes sulfide and carbonate minerals in glacial sediments to surface weathering reactions in lower slope regions with relict ice (Credit: Suzanne Tank)

About the University of Oxford

Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the eighth year running, and ​number 3 in the QS World Rankings 2024. At the heart of this success are the twin-pillars of our ground-breaking research and innovation and our distinctive educational offer.

Oxford is world-famous for research and teaching excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research alongside our personalised approach to teaching sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.

Through its research commercialisation arm, Oxford University Innovation, Oxford is the highest university patent filer in the UK and is ranked first in the UK for university spinouts, having created more than 300 new companies since 1988. Over a third of these companies have been created in the past five years. The university is a catalyst for prosperity in Oxfordshire and the United Kingdom, contributing £15.7 billion to the UK economy in 2018/19, and supports more than 28,000 full time jobs.

Thaw slump on the Peel Plateau, which exposes sulfide and carbonate minerals in glacial sediments to surface weathering reactions in lower slope regions with relict ice (Credit: Suzanne Tank)

Credit

Suzanne Tank

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adq4893 

Article Title

Temperature sensitivity of the mineral permafrost feedback at the continental scale

Article Publication Date

9-Oct-2024