US conservatives are often seen as distrusting scientists, and liberals as more trusting. This article examines how alignment between an expert’s field and individual political ideology affects claims perceptions. US adults (N = 1054) participated in a pre-registered (https://osf.io/9wnm2) online experiment, indicating their trust in five experts and evaluating the accuracy of four claims. Claims were attributed to experts from impact fields (focused on the consequences of industry and policy), production fields (industry-focused), scientists in general, or no source. Results show that liberals trust all experts more than conservatives and generally perceive claims as more accurate. However, the trust gap between liberals and conservatives is smaller for production experts. While no difference was found between the perceived accuracy of claims attributed to production versus impact experts, expert attribution increased some claims’ perceived accuracy. These findings reveal some political-ideology preferences and that attributing a claim to an expert can improve its perception.
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