Fallen into the trap of being ‘fake’: that doesn’t make you stupid

“No, that doesn’t make people stupid,” says medical physicist and science communicator Elka. Nobody is immune to that.”

“In times of extreme uncertainty, people try to explain things to themselves somehow,” explains the expert from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), “they want answers.”

Understandable. The only problem with that is: “Things like pandemics and the like are complex, there are many things involved that are not easy to explain. There is usually no black and white, especially when science was not so developed.”

The uncertainty and the deep desire to easily explain complicated matters and come up with theories are sometimes crucial for the fact that conspiracies work so well: “Our brain wants to recognize patterns, it wants to have a coherent explanation,” says the expert .

Unfortunately, myths about reptiles – that is, human-reptile hybrids –, about toxic chemtrails, about micro-control chips and the like are ideal for this.

No interest, viewed critically
Add to this the Austrians’ lack of interest in science and their skepticism about it. Xharo recognizes ‘the feeling of science in an ivory tower’ as the motive behind this.

“When the ÖAW investigates this topic, they answer that we should rely more on common sense than on scientific studies and that science should listen more to what ‘normal’ people think,” she reports.

“So people don’t know what to do with science, they wonder: what does this have to do with me?” the expert explains. “They miss the connection between the science ‘up there’ and their ‘normal’ lives. And trust suffers as a result.”

Better communication needed
Above all, better science communication is needed here: “This is already happening, especially since the pandemic,” says Xharo – but there is clearly still room for improvement.

Before Corona, for example, it was “almost somehow frowned upon” to deal with banal topics like science communication – or to be on social media.

“We now see how important it is that science returns the knowledge it gains from the resources of society as a whole and does not simply let it languish in a database.”

Get off your high horse
To reach people again, you have to reach them first. To do this, science must get off its horse.

“I know that an Instagram account, for example, is not a trade magazine and that you have to present things in a concise manner – but that also has its place,” says Xharo.

“Not everyone can read the New York Times. We must use all platforms to reach all target groups and meet people where they are. Everyone has the right to have science made known to them in such a way that they can accept and understand it.”

How science works
What is especially important for the expert is to help people understand science: the pandemic has shown that people do not know “how science works,” says Xharo.

Namely: “that science is a cognitive process that constantly questions itself, that there are no 100 percent truths, that you can almost never say that something works 100 percent, that does not exist.”

Xharo: “Science always expresses opportunities, and that was apparently not clear to many people during the pandemic. That is why many people have the impression that science has no idea, that it contradicts itself every time, that something different applies every day.”

Politics and science mixed
The researcher emphasizes that “this is the greatest strength of science and scientific research: that it constantly questions itself and does not rely on absolute truths, but rather adapts its findings as new data become available. And that’s actually very good.”

She sees this not only as a question for science, but also for politics: “You can only build trust here together.”

No surprise when you see that many Austrians are also skeptical about politics – and you consider that, for example, Corona emerged at a time with scandalous chat protocols and the Ibiza scandal.

How conspiracy theories arise
Conspiracy theories often come about in a similar way to the game ‘Silent Post’: someone says something, perhaps out of political calculation, out of spite, perhaps just in jest or out of boredom. What is said spreads – through him or others, and other people supplement it with their own impressions, assumptions, stories. Several versions of the original lie are already in development and circulating around the world, nowadays mainly online.

If you do it right, you can catch people with it. Sometimes this means credibly assuring that you heard, read, or said that from a scholarly source, in a research article, or even from someone who knows the subject. Or you can provide links to fake sources.

Recognize lies
In short, you have to look for clues if you suspect a lie and, for example, see which source is mentioned, whether there is a printout, what the language is – the more sensational something is worded, the more critically you have to look at it – and so on. Check out fact-checking sites like Mimikama.

Xharo advises people who are less internet literate or especially the elderly to ask their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren if they have ever heard of it or read something about it, or to ask for help with fact-checking.

Dealing with social media
But how should you deal with it now? It is often difficult to have objective discussions, especially on social media you sometimes don’t even know whether you are really communicating with an interested user or with a troll who just wants to be annoying, or with a machine.

At first, Xharo tries to have a “respectful discussion at eye level.” If that doesn’t work and the other person just wants to be annoying and cause problems, she advises blocking them – and in the case of hate posts, reporting the person to the relevant medium.