S3 #42 What does the research say about Science Communication? Brain-to-brain with Prof. Rainer Bromme.

0:00Hi and welcome to Kaleidoscience, here you find answers about cognition that you may or may not have asked yourself. This episode is hosted by Imogen Huesing and Sophie Kuhne. So sit back, relax and enjoy this week's episode. Before the episode starts, a short disclaimer. Due to technical difficulties, the audio quality might be slightly lower than what you are used to and some of the sections have background noises. We try to minimize him as much as possible and we hope that you will

0:31enjoy this episode anyway. Have fun! Welcome to this episode, which is part of our winter special. In this episode, after talking to a lot of science communicators, we will go a little deeper into the science of science communication. And to do that, we would like to welcome Professor Rainer Brombe, who is a professor of psychology at the University of Münster in the areas of psychology, where he focuses on educational psychology, science education, and

1:12science communication. And next to his own research, he is a member of several committees and advisory boards for science communication. Welcome and thank you for making the time for talking to us. Thank you for the invitation. So, before we start into the topic of today's episode, we want to play our welcome game as always. And, yeah, I will start five sentences that you then spontaneously complete.

1:48The first sentence is, as a kid, I always wanted to be. I wanted to be a kind of sailor. I wanted to travel around the world, you know, large ship, as large as possible. Very different from what you do now. And were you ever able to travel on a ship? No, but my most favorite sport I'm doing is kayaking.

2:20Oh, yeah. Very nice. It fits quite well. The next sentence is, if I was an emoji, I would be. Oh, actually, this is a question for self-hate, because I don't like and I don't use emojis. So, let me take the emoji who laughs but simultaneously cries. A favorite of mine, I have to say. The third sentence is, my favorite thing to do on a day

2:56off is? Kayaking. Nice. And the fourth sentence is, right now I'm most fascinated by? Oh, I'm still very fascinated by science and by the successes and also sometimes the failures of research, I'm always interested in reading about new findings. Of course, I mean, reading in popular magazines in all finds. I'm still very fascinated by that. Nice. That's so cool to see that even after quite a long academic career,

3:34there's still the curiosity, that there's still the curiosity to learn new things. Yeah, I think curiosity is the basic, or it's one of the basic characteristics or features or attitudes you need to have to do this, to work in this field. I think otherwise, I mean, I came across people who gave me the feeling that they have lost their curiosity,

4:07but this often results in kind of sterile way they do the research. So I think it's necessary as a kind of motivator as well as a kind of guideline, so to say. Yeah. And the last sentence is, I know it's time to call it a day when... When I've finished, especially when I've managed to finish a paper, that's happy.

4:39Nice. Thanks. Before we start into the main topic, we want to talk a bit more about your scientific journey, your academic journey, so your main field is psychology, and if I read it correctly, you started out more in the realm of teaching and the classroom for your research focus. Yes. Since I... Actually, as it often is the case, more accidentally, after when I finished my diploma in psychology,

5:17I was offering a German research institute for mathematics education, and by there I had the possibility to still to work as a psychologist, and therefore I always had the challenge of finding themes, subjects, research topics which allowed me to keep up a psychological perspective in the context of mathematics education, and that's what I did for nearly 20

5:51years, but simultaneously I graduated Ph.D. and habilitación in psychology. And this, in a sense, motivated me to be quite interested in interdisciplinary research on the one hand, but also it sharpened my understanding of what it means to be a psychologist. It's a little bit like if you're a Catholic in a Protestant environment, you learn very much about what it

6:26means to be a Catholic. So, I think it's similar. So, you learn more about basically what distincts your research field from other research fields? Yes. When you come here. Since then, I'm very interested in also in other disciplines, in the structures and concepts of other disciplines and in which ways they differ or are similar to psychology.

6:58And when did you start to get involved in research about science communication? Like, when did you kind of shift from science about education to science about science communication? Well, it was, I started for a long time, I was researching teachers. Mathematics and science teachers' cognitions and their professional knowledge. And from that, it is not too far to go to

7:33the question, well, what does the general public think about knowledge and science? And in a sense, I could even call an exact date. So, to say, when I started with that, I suggested to the German Science Foundation a kind of research program of understanding of science and dealing with the public's dealing with conflicting scientific evidence.

8:05And this program offered a lot of colleagues and myself to do research in the public understanding of scientific evidence. That's really funny. Before, I have to say, I spent some years with a research focus on so-called epistemic beliefs, which is, in a sense, a kind of metacognitive understanding of you, of what people think about knowledge.

8:38And from there, the next step is then to ask, well, what are people thinking about knowledge in general, but more special about scientific knowledge? Yeah, maybe we can go a bit into epistemic beliefs. I mean, could you give a bit more of an explanation of what epistemic beliefs are and maybe where they

9:08come from, how they develop? Yes, there are, in the literature, there are, so to say, two possible answers. One is an answer which, where the epistemic beliefs are more or less a kind of metacognitive awareness about one's own, one's own knowledge. And there's another counter approach which says no epistemic beliefs are beliefs or should be conceived as ideas people have about the knowledge of others. And of others means, especially of those who are, who have

9:46another kind of expertise than you have yourself. And I would say that when it comes to science education, as well as to citizens' capabilities to cope with the everyday, with science in the everyday world, both kinds of epistemic beliefs matter. It's obvious that a kind of understanding of one's own understanding, and also, by the way, the limits of one's own understanding matter, but also the ideas people have about, for example, researchers, scientists, but also science journalists'

10:24ideas about science. Okay, can I try and give, like, two examples for this? Because this idea is currently a little bit abstract for me. So, the first thing you talked about is my knowledge about what I think I know. So, for example, I don't know, when I'm in the kitchen and I look at the pasta and I know it needs to boil for about 10 minutes. That's me kind of knowing that, and I am aware that I

11:03know that. Do I understand that correctly? Yes, yes. But this is, of course, this is a nice example of what in psychology typically is called metacognition. I know that I know that. I would, and there are colleagues who would argue that simultaneously this is kind of science knowledge because they, the science of, I mean, it is obviously the cooking of pasta is an element which, or is a process which

11:38could be understood from a scientific point of view. So, but I would say, no, this is not, if I, as a, standing in the kitchen and have an idea about that, I would not call that as a kind of science which I have, because I would argue that science is not only content, but it is also a kind of social process and a kind of social institution, meaning it's only if I start to think about concepts

12:16where I have the idea, well, this is what scientists might think about cooking, then I would argue this is a kind of epistemic beliefs which are really science-related epistemic beliefs. Okay, and the second way of epistemic beliefs you talked about is that, for example, I believe that even though I don't understand mathematics particularly well, I believe that the scientists who do the research on that do.

12:49Yeah, yes, yes. And just, for example, people often think that it's a very widely widespread assumption that in mathematics, for example, all concepts are always very precisely defined, that there is no variance of the understanding of concepts. And so when I, as a psychologist, for example, started to work in this math education project, I was really, it was quite astonishing for me to learn, for example, that there are huge books in mathematics and in the

13:29philosophy of mathematics where it is argued what is a variable, for example. Every concept of what is a variable is only in school textbooks. It's quite obvious when it comes to philosophy of mathematics and real mathematics, it is clear there are different approaches, schools, ideas. Of course, there are more prevalent than other ideas, but still there's at least a kind of history

14:02of the understanding of what a variable, what a number and so on is. And in terms of that, I think it is helpful if people have a kind of realistic idea also about the very nature of the sciences and mathematics and so on. This applies even more for, I think, in everyday context. It's more relevant in the context of, for example, chemistry or biology.

14:37There is, it's important to teach and to talk as much as possible about the very nature of scientific concepts. But that's what I just did when I talk about the historical changes of the concept of a variable. Yeah, that makes sense. And epistemic beliefs tie into science communication and research in the way that I believe scientists

15:07in general and I know that my knowledge is limited. Yes, and also the ideas I have about what I can expect from scientists. For example, to have a very concrete example, when the COVID pandemic emerged, it suddenly became obvious that scientific evidence is evidence which is constituted by a kind of agreement within the scientific community. And this is, aligns not with what students learn in school when they are confronted with parts of Newtonian physics

15:47or so. There it is said, well, it is, these are very well-established concepts. And the very fact that establishing these concepts is a kind of social agreement that is very, in a sense, it's very hard to grasp because it is inherently true that these concepts are neither arbitrary nor pure invention and that they reflect a kind of reality, the concepts of physics and the concepts of chemistry and concepts of biology.

16:25And on the other hand, simultaneously, they are kind of social agreements among researchers. And it's very difficult to, but also important to emphasize these dual characteristics of concepts because if these both sides are emphasized simultaneously, this is a kind of gateway of science denialists. This is what I just had started with mentioning it. I would like to come back to the COVID pandemic because there, suddenly, it was used by science denialists and

17:04all kinds of conspiracy theorists, so to say, they said, well, all these guys, they are not very clear about the COVID virus and everything. And so we cannot believe them, meaning that only if there is a kind of clarity and final agreement on what a scientific concept is, that only if that is achieved, then it would be

17:37possible to work with a scientific concept. But in reality, that is not the case, especially when it doesn't come to something new like it has been the COVID virus. I think that is also something I notice a lot, that also the updating of scientific knowledge is always kind of publicly perceived as the researchers have been wrong. But it's not necessarily that there has been things that were

18:16wrong, but more like we need to update. So we gain more knowledge, and with that more knowledge, we can improve the theory. Yes. Fortunately, the surveys, as they've done, for example, in the context of the German Science Barometer, this large representative survey about German's perspectives on science, they show that typically this incremental nature of production of scientific

18:50knowledge is not conceived in the public as being problematic. It is only when it is put into a politically or ideologically contested context, then it suddenly could become a kind of counter-argument against the truth or validity of scientific evidence. But in general, it can be, fortunately, very fortunately, we can assume that at least Germans, it might be different,

19:24by the way, in the US, that's much more separated ideologically, but at least in Germany, you can say that the majority, if they have ideas at all about what science is, and so on, are not totally confused, so to say, when they learn that these concepts are incrementally refined and changed. That's very good. So you said that people are aware of these incremental updates, and generally, obviously, it would be

20:05good if the general public believes in science and the science that is communicated to them. How does that work? So how do you communicate science in a way that people can understand and believe it? Well, let me jump to your first sentence. It's not that I would argue that someone from science or science

20:36communication should wish for a kind of gullible faith and public belief in science. Obviously, it would be necessary to have what I like to call a kind of informed trust, and this means that, of course, people are critical and they are vigilant against all kinds of deceiving and preliminarity, so to say,

21:06of scientific findings, of course. But the problem, what I mean is that such very concrete, informed trust, meaning there's such a critical attitude, is then against what comes up as a new finding, which is then said by someone to be relevant for the everyday life of a citizen, that should be at least perceived and processed based on

21:37the general attitude, the general idea that science is an important voice, so to say, to tell us something about the real world. Because typically in everyday life, I mean, you are in a student and study context, and I'm working in a study and university context, just as you, but typically people live not in these contexts, but they

22:08live in contexts where they get information about issues, for example, of health or climate and so from a lot of different sources. And science is only one of these different sources, and that's fine so far. So, it is just, I think it is important for trust in science that people at least have a general positive appreciation and expectation about this kind of source of knowledge.

22:43And this general expectation could be then the kind of background, which of course is then concretely enacted, it could be for very good reasons that people are very critical. I mean, it's also obvious that not all what scientists say turns out to be true. Often it happens then that later it turns out things are now seen in a different way than they used

23:17to be seen. But this does not mean, or it is helpful to deal with that if one starts with a kind of background mindset, so to say, which is rather appreciative of science. We call that, or one notion for that is, it would be, or it is typically positive if people have a kind of belief in the potency of science. This is a concept suggested by a U.S.

23:53colleague, I think, by the name Monroe. He has suggested this notion of potency of science, meaning, well, it means what the word says, that people have basic belief that at least in principle, science is an important kind of mechanism, but also an important kind of social enterprise which produces reliable, or which could produce reliable knowledge, which might,

24:24or which sometimes, not always, but sometimes matter for real-life decisions people have to make. In school, often the focus on the science subjects is more on communicating basically the facts or what the science community sees as the current state of knowledge. Do you think it would be beneficial to also teach more of this social aspect of science, of the scientific method? Because I think if you don't study, you don't really learn

25:03about the social aspect of science after school. Yes, I think it would be very, very important and helpful to do that. And it is also, yes, I totally agree with it. And it is also necessary to add, so to say, that what I mean with this. Because nowadays, at least in the gymnasium, the syllabus already has a kind of emphasis, not only on the facts,

25:36but also on the methods, how they are established, explaining what an experiment is and so on. But this is not the whole story, so to say, about this social nature of science. And that means when it comes, for example, let me get back to the COVID example. It is more important to learn why, in which way you can establish that Christian Drosten is more reliable than

26:09one of these esoteric guys who run these science denialists podcasts, which are existing, then explaining why the structure of the virus itself. And this has a strong implication. If I'm starting to talk about why Christian Drosten is reliable, I have to talk about the social system of science, why, what does it mean to become a professor and a director in that field where he works, and also to help that sometimes there are people who are professors

26:48and scientists in such institutions, but they are nevertheless talking nonsense. But overall, this is less probable, and things like that. Talking about that, you are suddenly talking not about germs, about the structures of virus. You are talking about a kind of social phenomenon. And I think it is necessary, or it should be, that in chemistry and in biology and in science teaching, such topics also should be covered.

27:22Let me add that it's also clear, I think, I would clearly argue that the kind of basic understanding of the basic concepts in chemistry, biology, physics, and so on, that they are still necessary. It's not that I would argue, well, you should, it is possible to talk only about this social structure of science, but I would like to emphasize that talking about the methods, and now I'm repeating what I already said,

27:58it's not enough, as it is said nowadays in the syllabus, at least in Germany, and more exactly, I recently looked up in North Rhine-Westphalia, in the state where I live in, that clearly says, yes, we have to talk about this concept in science, but then also about the methods. But it's not said, also about the social structure of the real existing institutions in Germany.

28:30And that is what I think is necessary, because when people, when they are out of school, and they are confronted with all these different voices telling them something, they have to decide who to trust, it is not very helpful to have a grasp of understanding of what a virus is. So, in order for people to increase their trust in science in general, they not only need the information the

29:05scientists find out about, but also the concept where the scientists exist and do their research. Yes. Okay. Yes, and in that very general sense, there's a kind of agreement nowadays in all kinds of science educators, but I would like to radicalize that a little bit when I point to that this requires to teach

29:35about the real concrete society which scientists are available there. Or to put it even more practically, I think it would be very helpful if in chemistry education, just to take an example, the teacher would not only talk about acid and about patients and bases, but also would take about which chemists nowadays are present on some kind of social media and what are they doing and are there

30:13examples of those who are reliable and are there examples of kind of freaks who are providing very strange theories and to help students to deal with this kind of science in their media environment. What can we as science communicators take away from this insight? So should we communicate more about the process of how we got to results?

30:45Should we make the social dynamics behind research and science more transparent to communicate that more instead of results? Well, as I said, not in the sense of that results don't matter, but in this two provocative answers would be science communicators should read a lot of newspapers. I mean, they should be aware about present conflicts and debates

31:17in the general public which matter for science. This refers back to what I said earlier when I said, well, the default value or the default attitude people have against science is neither very critical nor very interested. people are not distrustful distrustful of science. Typically, they have a rather positive, mildly positive expectation. It's only when there is politically motivated or for other reasons motivated kind of science denialism that this problem occurs

31:58at all. And that's what I mean why it's necessary to read the newspaper because it is necessary to understand, for example, to take a very concrete example, there is a clear put forward by the AFD when it comes to climate change, there is a clear they have a clear agenda of science denialism. And in terms of that, it is, of course, important to be aware about that, about the political motives behind

32:38it and things like that. That makes sense. Just for the people who might not be German, the AFD is the far right-wing party in Germany. You also already touched on the fact that teachers shouldn't just communicate the scientific facts, but also maybe talk about science communicators, for example, on social media. So, how do you think the, yeah, let's say the popularization of social media over the last few years has

33:18changed and shaped science communication? At least it offered the possibility of a kind of discourse among citizens about science-related topics. And, of course, it has always been the case also in the past that people are not alone, so to say. They talk with their grandmother and their husband or their wife about findings or about things they hear

33:52about science if it somehow matters for themselves. And nowadays, the room and the number of people who possibly could involve in such discussions has enlarged. and this, of course, is an important, I would say, contextual condition, so to say, for science communication. When I, preparing my sentence, I realize in my mind that I have not, or at

34:27least at present, I'm not aware about studies which really show if there has been an increase on science-related topics as topics discussed in social media. I would assume that, again, this depends on events, on reasons for public interest in science which typically comes from events and incidents which are being out of science, meaning the COVID epidemic suddenly

35:01led to the effect that people got interested in science while typically they are, for very good reasons, they aren't, they haven't been very interested in science and that's fine so far. I don't think that science should be having a missionary attitude that everyone had a kind of knowledge and understanding of science. I mean, carpenters also make their living, there's a kind of division of labor, it's also for carpenters

35:42not necessary that everyone is interested in the business and in the skills of carpenters. So, in terms of that, I think it is fine then when people are interested in knowledge which has been shown to be valid by science but it is not necessary that people are in a very overarching sense are

36:13interested in science. Why? I mean, science communicators often think so but I think why? This has to be legitimate. Yeah, I feel like for me it's that I'm interested in science myself. I feel like this is also so, I mean, we've talked to some science communicators for a winter special and

36:44I think there's a large overlap of people who do research and do science communication. Yeah. Yeah, I think that it is very helpful and it is very good for society when there are many researchers but also journalists are interested in discussing and talking about science. This is quite clear but I always think it somehow should be related to issues people really are interested in

37:21and are and that there should be good reasons so to say that it is important for citizens to know about that and to be aware about that. but I am a little bit hesitant against the idea that that science as a realm of that all knowledge which is produced by science is this worthwhile and necessary so to

37:54say to sell it to the general public because I mean as I said there's a kind of division of cognitive labour and the division of labour and it is clear there are parts of scientific knowledge which are very important for the production of science scientific knowledge but which is not necessary that all citizens know about that.

38:27I feel like a lot of science communicators are scientists themselves and as we discussed in the beginning if you want to work in that field you need this curiosity and I feel like I guess sometimes science communicators me definitely included forget that this curiosity is not shared by everyone outside of this research realm.

38:57I would like to be very clear it is very good to advertise and to for that curiosity to find to increase it and so on but on the other hand I just want to say just for avoidance of disappointments and for a better and more rational discussion about what should be the aims of science communication what should

39:30we achieve within the general public so to say as the attitude as idea about science in terms of that I'm always emphasizing this other side that the very idea that all scientific findings should be brought among the general public that this is often implicitly I think taken for granted and therefore I like to come up at least

40:03with two question marks for three I've now talked a lot about the importance of trust in science communication and also played a big role in your research on science communication could you maybe go a bit into how you research trust yes I could give you two examples so one example is that we for example we studied which

40:36ways people explain for themselves when they come across contradicting scientific claims so this happens of course people try to find evidence about the for example the impact of sugar for health or something like that and then they come across contradictory evidence or arguments not evidence but arguments put forward they find it easily in the internet and what

41:09we studied empirically was the ideas people have so to say implicit theories people have why that happens why it happens that scientists contradict each other and this is one of the research strands which we developed in our my former group in Münster and which since then several other colleagues elsewhere but also those who used to be members

41:41of my group nowadays still work on trying to establish empirically what people think why researchers contradict each one which is one of the things which we studied another issue which we studied were so to say the dimensions of trustworthiness people we were able to show that when people make judgments about why is a scientist trustworthy and more

42:14trustworthy than another which dimension they refer to one of the interesting in my view interesting findings is that the overall pattern of reasons for trust and distrust why do people distrust and trust is the same but what really matters for judgments of trust and what really matters for judgment of distrust differs so what we find is that

42:46for judgments of trust the main most important dimension is expertise meaning I trust those experts who have the most knowledge who are the most skillful and I distrust those experts who where I have the strongest indication that they might have that they are not benevolent that they might have additional motives so to say working in their own

43:19pockets so to say this is people are very sensitive against that they are very yeah they are very sensitive against smallest indication of this kind of non-benevolence then the trust in the scientists immediately decreases strongly but when it comes to well this scientist is very trustworthiness but this one is even more trustworthiness than what matters is expertise

43:51so we have by the way now I already mentioned these three two of the three dimensions which we found empirically this is expertise this is benevolence these are the both I mentioned then somehow relate to that integrity meaning do scientists adhere to the rules so to say and then there's a fourth dimension which we had not established

44:24but the US colleague John Basley has additionally established the dimension of openness and nowadays we also find that an idea of is that scientist willing to communicate is he able to communicate and this is a fourth dimension which makes up or which impacts on trustworthiness judgments so we have these four dimensions and this is the other I

44:56think relatively important finding which we had and which by the way since then are also somehow in a slight version part of the Wissenschaftsbarometer the annual Wissenschaftsbarometer not in all years but all very often has items representing these dimensions could you briefly explain for the people who are not from Germany what the science barometer is oh yeah

45:27of course the German science barometer is a annual representative surveys about Germans trust in science it's a little bit comparable to there's a huge there are in other countries comparable surveys but the German science barometer is in a very similar and related way done by the way in Switzerland they use the same more or less the same set of questions and typically the survey questionnaire it's a representative survey as I said it has two parts one

46:07is a part of the items as I just mentioned trust and the dimensions of trustworthiness and then each year there are different in addition they use different items for example last year was about I think freedom academic freedom things like that people's ideas about the role and importance of academic freedom and this is the survey is done by a kind of agency which is independent from the government but which is funded by more or less a

46:47mixture of public money and also money from private founders foundations like the Bosch foundation but both funders don't they have no control so to say about the survey the survey is done by a group of those who are hired for that as I said as an agency in Berlin running that it is done every year since 2017 so nowadays we have very interesting always we also could see a very interesting sequence for example you can say

47:27more or less one of the main interesting they have let me explain they have I think five I think five or seven I've forgotten how points came on people's trust in science and it shows that more or less 50 between 50 and 60 percent of the Germans typically say they have full or at least large trust in science and it's only 20 percent who deliberately say they have deliberately no trust in science so this is relatively

48:07stable and by the way it is quite similar to findings in other countries for example in Switzerland and also in the COVID was interesting there was a peak in COVID the increase the trust in science increased and then in the following years it went back to that level which I just mentioned one of the most interesting insights from the science parameter because when I now reflect on the COVID times it feels like this huge age of

48:47this trust and this information but actually I think especially in the beginning there was this huge interest in scientific findings like you mentioned in the beginning and also interest in scientific findings and the process that wasn't as relevant before I guess yeah and this is very interesting what you said that and I also agree that if you possibly in social media but also possibly in the traditional media you could have the impression there is a rise

49:26of public distrust in science but these figures show that this is not true as I said the general attitude against science is might be positive among the general public in Germany as I said only but by the way what is also very important is this relatively high highly positive stance people have against science is shown by means of the general survey item asking do you what is your trust in science in general sense if you ask

50:04what in that general sense but what is your trust in science with regard to climate change or with regard to medicine or with regard to very specific topics then the pattern becomes more nuanced and more differentiated then it is very clear that the general ideas and public attitudes about these attitudes these fields has a strong impact on the trust in science about these fields so there are differences up to 10% so to say between public in

50:43Germany for example trust in science in the context of climate change is relatively high and this is more in other countries and so you have differences with regard to different fields which is which could clearly be related to public discourse in the media discourse and political conflicts about that these issues for example Germany when it comes to gene modified food people are or there's a larger proportion of people who are critical against that than those who

51:21are critical against science in general but to add that my interpretation is that this is not primarily that people are critical about the science of gene modification they are critical about gene modification and that is a difference yes often it's sometimes it is by the way a fault and a in my view pretty problematic point that this is confused in reporting about surveys then it said well people don't believe the signs of the scientific evidence about

51:59gene modification then I would say well often it's the case they have why I mean I'm not discussing if it's justified or not it's just that I would say no there's a public opposition against gene modific modificated food and it's not a public doubt about the science of that I could imagine that you would get similar results now about large language models like that there's maybe a distrust in large or negative opinion in the public about

52:37large language models when they still might trust the science about large language models well I mean it's this is a very interesting topic I am a little I present I'm starting a little bit to work on that but I could say the last German science barometer they asked about people's ideas about large language models at least at that time meaning that it's the last survey it's always done I think in August something like that I might

53:16be wrong but something around that resided in a rather positive result meaning the surveyed German population at that time there was a majority of Germans who had a rather positive appreciation of large language model which I found very interesting and I would not have expected it but that is empirically the case so you said that you could

53:47see in the surveys an increased trust in science during the COVID pandemic in Germany do you have any ideas or theories why there was an increase in trust during this time even though it was so difficult in many ways it's a good question I would say first of all I would like to say that it was not

54:18there are it's easier to talk about a hypothesis which is put forward and which I would say is wrong there are colleagues who said well it's obvious that it's clear why this increased was people were grasping for every straw they could get I mean it's a kind of social psychology explanation things are very the environment is very

54:49unsafe so to say the world is very unsafe due to the COVID and there for people rely on whoever is in authority I don't like that interpretation and I don't think that it's deep enough I said it you might remember I mentioned already earlier I said well nowadays typically people don't have reasons to think too much about

55:21science and too much about why should scientists always expect the general public should be very interested and enthusiastic about science of course there are results which are very important that everyone knows about it but there's much science done where there's no reason that the general public should be interested in it and that one should blame the public

55:52for not being interested I would say that when it comes to that background when it comes to COVID suddenly so to say this part of medicine which epidemiology also other fields which are related to coping with COVID for example psychology and education science when it comes to the question of the detrimental impacts of closing schools and that

56:23all the research around coping with COVID suddenly became very emergent and visible for the general public as relevant for the dealing with this new situation and therefore I think suddenly people became interested in it and as I said they started with a kind of preemptive assignment of positive expectations to science do you think so during the COVID

56:54pandemic I mean Christian Dosten became Germany's most famous virologist do you think the scientists willingness like in the case of Christian Dosten also supported this that he basically immediately when this started basically started doing a podcast and started explaining as much as you could about the pandemic yes I mean this helped a lot and I think this

57:24is very laudable that he did that on the other hand I would clearly say that this should not be taken as a kind of general expectation to all scientists because I said that in another context there is a kind of division of labor and this also refers to science communication to put it more general as a rule or to put it in a normative way I would say the general public pays for scientists at least when

58:03they are in universities or public funded research labs and therefore the general public therefore it's a kind of duty that scientists in a way are open about their work to the general public that's very clear I think this is their duty as citizens and as scientists but that does not mean by no ways that they themselves have to do this communication it could also be that they are open for journalists who ask them that they are

58:41willing to explain to other experts who are better in science communication what they are doing so I'm emphasizing that because there are voices who sometimes argue that every scientist should be able and willing to do science communication I already said that I think this is not a very reasonable expectation but as I said everyone should accept and be willing and support as a scientist that he or she provides his or her research gained information insights knowledge

59:19to those who somehow do science communication yes in terms of that Christian Drosten was an exempt there are sometimes such intuitive very good communicators but by the way he had to pay a hard price for it I mean you know he was attacked personally there were times where he used you need police protection and all that so I'm admiring him but I do not I would not argue that he is the kind of pattern for everyone

59:58no and also yeah the cost for him I also read that he received death threats yes for communicating about his science so yeah I fully agree that we cannot expect all scientists to communicate the science themselves publicly on the other hand on at one of the conferences that I was at last week I can't remember whether it was the WISCON or the Fum Wissen Schatz Kommunikation I think at one of those we had a discussion about

1:00:36whether the podcast would have been as successful if it was the COVID-19 podcast by the Charité instead of the COVID-19 podcast by Christian Drosten so if it was presented by this institution instead of this individual person well I mean I will always say that for psychological reasons it is necessary it's always helpful to have a concrete person I mean in the televisions you also have anchor men and anchor women representing a specific format it and this

1:01:14is one thing and the other thing is you remember I told you about these features of trustworthy scientists when I talk about expertise integrity openness in principle these features also apply to if you ask people about science in general not about scientists it principally works also there but as I said from a social psychology point of view

1:01:47it is obvious that messages are easier to process and also trustworthiness judgments are easier if they could be somehow assigned to individual persons than to institutions but I would also like to emphasize that it is necessary for them for those individuals who are representing these institutions that they themselves always emphasize very strongly that they somehow are part

1:02:20of a community I mean this in a way relates back to what I already said when I said that one of the main challenge of science communication is to explicate that science could produce a kind of objective truth and still is a kind of social agreement among scientists and in order to emphasize that it is important for

1:02:52the individual scientists to point also on the lab behind him or her and all the people around him but as I remember as far as I remember by the way Christian Drossen always did that he emphasizes very strongly that of course he is interpret I mean by the way he often switched in the role of someone who

1:03:25was commenting research and synthesizing research not only reporting his own research and this could be scientists who are doing who have their credit and their faithful and trustworthiness because they are doing their own research but it could be also someone who is totally focused for example on putting scientific evidence together and presenting it nowadays there are for

1:03:58example in science as you of course know from psychology we know that there are people who are mainly focusing on in their work on doing meta analysis they do are not doing primary research but meta analysis which is also a very important and very important kind of doing research which also would be a case of a scientist

1:04:31who in his scientific work does meta analysis and simultaneously would do science communication on that this would be also very interesting yeah I just also thought or I thought for myself whether I had examples of people who are not actively researchers but who are doing science communications which I like individually perceive as trustworthy just instinctively not that

1:05:04I really looked into their beliefs outside or whatever and what came to mind were the hosts of the Dessendung demos so German not necessarily just science communication show but like a German education show for kids and at least when I was young you always had one of three hosts there and you got to know got to know

1:05:35and got to know the hosts and they became kind of authority figures on this educational content and for example I'm still following Ralf Casper as one of the hosts and look to his takes on certain topics yeah I think the Sending with the mouse is a very good example for science communication for kids yes what are the current topics in science communication research what fields of science communication research are most prominent well I would say at

1:06:15least in my view what would be a hot topic not meaning that it is actually well no there's there's already nowadays every day I get alerts on new papers which came out on that and this is the impact of large language models on science communication we already mentioned that very shortly I think large language models are really new development with really new I mean that we have had in the past always new social media and more

1:06:55generally internet related developments which somehow impact on science communication but I think that large language models so to say are they are shuffling the cards in a new way or at least I would say in a way which has to be understood and I would not claim that I really have understood it I see the challenge for research on science communication to understand theoretically as well as empirically the impact of the availability of these large language

1:07:35models on science communication because and I think this has to be studied in the future for the very simple fact that in itself it will be we are seeing at present that it is developing so meaning that this impact would be in one year or two years different or much stronger than it is nowadays but even nowadays I think one could say someone has come to the table so to say imagine a table where they are

1:08:15sitting the scientists they are sitting the journalists hired by universities which are their job is somehow to communicate about the merits of their specific institutions and you have science journalists so they are sitting on the table and then there are citizens who sometimes come and go back from the table because they are interested as we said when they are concerned personally by an issue or topic we discussed that with reference to the COVID pandemic but now

1:08:55there's an additional guy sitting on the table and this is these large language models and I describe that deliberately in that human-like style because I think this is the strength and but also the very strange quality of these agents that they act in that human-like manner and I think we have to take that serious that suddenly there

1:09:25is someone who has a very strange role in he or I refer to it now as he this guy large language model he could do both he could work act like a science journalist he could act like a scientist who puts together information and often he is reliable often he is not and you have to somehow to

1:09:57figure it out I'm not adding to the voice who say oh it's always very unreliable I would say it's to my experience when it comes to issues which are not politically contested and where there's large public internet available text bases on it and also where the system is aware about possible denialists or denial voices then it comes

1:10:28up with very I would say high quality evidence for example if you ask what are the main reasons for climate change or what are the reasons for the assumption that humans are strongly responsible for climate change it came up with very reasonable I think helpful responses but of course you can also come up with questions which would

1:11:00you provide with information which are misleading of course but overall there's someone new sitting on the table and we have to learn how to deal with this new guy hanging around at our table where we discuss and argue about science communication and I think this is very interesting I mean for me as a researcher it's very interesting

1:11:31to understand that better and yeah this is my response to the question what is the at least what I feel most interesting issues and I give a little teaser I have read recently several studies about the question about the quality of the responses and also about the public's trust in these responses and I have very recently done

1:12:03small case studies where I asked the system if it popped in science I took that serious to take it as a like a human being and then I tried to I gave the system all the question of the German science parameter and I wanted to understand in which way the system responds to that and I found that

1:12:34overall it has a little bit more positive general attitude about science than it has than the general public I asked it also on the same scale as the science parameter does but when I asked for the reasons to about for example reasons about benevolence integrity and expertise it comes up with very reasonable textbook like responses I just

1:13:06wanted to say that's really interesting to look into or see what the system says about science and so on I see a lot of research going into how does LLMs represent this it's a fascinating field I think you'll also learn a lot about the AI system but you'll also learn a lot about the underlying data yes yes

1:13:38yes I think so I I find it yes I find that interesting because if we take I mean we don't know exactly which data it uses of course but if it's true that it more or less harvests all kinds of documents found in the internet then you could argue that the output is a kind of empirically data

1:14:10on what the social psychologists have what social psychologists have called the social representations this is a social psychology concept put forward by the French psychologist Moscovici where he characterizes overarching non-individual but cultural ideas which exist in a certain society at a certain point in time these are the ideas about how the world is he calls that social

1:14:42representations and typically for many years it was only rather difficult to establish empirically these social representations because we had to do in-depth interviews or surveys asking people and nowadays we have we could ask very simply the system and then this will report you about what I would say will provide a kind of condensed version of the social

1:15:14representations about a certain topic as far as they are written of course I always would say the public opinions held by such individual citizens could be different from written documents but of course both are somehow related and if you accept that restriction to the written and public available text then I would say it's a very interesting tool

1:15:46to establish empirically the social representations of existing social representation in the society about a certain topic in terms of that I'm also very interested in large language models as a tool as an empirical tool for establishing data on social representations there is actually one large language model that was fine tuned on psych physics experiments and that basically

1:16:18trumps every other behavioural modelling attempt in that area it's called Centaur and the research lab where I'm going to write my master thesis actually looks into how we can use it maybe as an artificial participant or what we can learn from this model Centaur about human behaviour oh that's interesting but I have not fully understand in which

1:16:50ways is that trained it's trained on behavioural data on different experiments on for example reaction time and so on oh yeah yeah I remember yeah I have read about that yeah yeah I see yes yeah I found that a very interesting project yes but this is another but that's really interesting because it emphasises the need to make

1:17:22these differentiations when I talk about social representations it is not about the real behaviour of people but it is about the media coverage of the real behaviour of people you are doing that with regard to and it would be very interesting to compare both by the way that's true yeah so what would you say are like a

1:17:54point or two that would be good to take away from this episode for people who have listened to us well first is the point I made trust in science science in Germany is not endangered or is this not a real problem but it could be easily come under pressure so to say this is one message the other

1:18:26thing is that I would say trust in science is important and it is important that scientists are thinking about that but it's also relieving and therefore important to know that science and in general but especially scientists are not really controlling in a psychological and social sense the general public trust in science there are many other actors who

1:18:58impact on that and scientists have to be aware about that but they do not take the whole burden so to say of maintaining trust in science okay thank you and usually in the end we also ask because we are cognitive science podcast generally speaking how does cognition tie into your research about science communication oh I would say

1:19:30100% or everywhere I mean because we are discussing about attitudes about concepts about understanding and I mean this is cognition and of course we have not deliberately talked about emotions but this also involves emotions but emotions by the very definition itself have a cognitive element and in terms of that cognitive science comes in here and I'm aware

1:20:02that cognitive psychology is not the same but I would also say that when it comes to cognitive science this involves also aspects beyond the psychological aspects of the sociology of science and also the epistemology of science and I refer to all these to these bodies of knowledge also already in terms of that cognitive science was present in

1:20:34every second of our interview thank you so much for talking to us today my pleasure and thank you for your questions this was kaleidoscience we hope that you enjoyed this episode and we would love to have your feedback you can rate our podcast and give us feedback on our instagram account have a great week and you'll hear from us again in two weeks this episode was hosted by imogenhüsing and sophie kühne produced by imogenhüsing clara kühne sophie kühne söhnke löw and elisa palmer the music is from jan-luka schroeder and the logo is from annika richter