Author: Leonidas Ananiadis

The POIESIS research team produced an analytical aide memoire towards recommendations about how institutions can promote responsible research to enhance trust in science.

This comes as a result of elaborated research that was both qualitative and participatory, and included 22 Focus Groups, at least 3 in each POIESIS consortium country which involved 130 institutional stakeholders. Those were followed by 7 Roundtable Workshop (one in each country) with 84 participants in total which were fed on institutional priorities that were recognised by the aforementioned Focus Groups.

While results differed quite significantly from one context to another, there were some key priorities recognised through this research:

Regarding Research Integrity to: a) implement clear guidelines, codes of conduct and promote shared research integrity standards across institutions and countries, b) implement continuous, career-long training and education programmes for students, scientists, but also other professionals working in the institution, and c) to ensure a culture of transparency regarding the institutional handling of misconduct.

On the topic of Organisation of Science: a) to increase administrative support throughout the research process, covering areas such as budget management, external collaboration and relations, and data management, b) to encourage scientific institutions to address the organizational tensions, conflicting imperatives they contribute to generate, c) an in-depth revision of the performance evaluation system towards more qualitative measures, d) to ensure science independence and to develop public conversation about the private funding of universities and research organisations, and d) to protect own members, and particularly scientists, from external attacks.

On the field of Social Integration on Science to: a) provide scientists with the necessary knowledge and resources to engage in a sustainable and meaningful process of social integration, b) promote collaborative spaces and buildings: buildings should be designed and built to favour openness, c) develop and consider new ways of consulting citizens at local and regional level, d) implement the inclusion of scientific knowledge in school curricula – the only moment in life when all societal groups can be reached simultaneously – but also foster life-long learning opportunities in this regard.

Concerning Science Communication, key priorities are: a) to act both at global and local levels combining comprehensive participation with mass dissemination, b) to use institutional communicators to make citizens aware of research in the early stages, c) to avoid assuming a “crisis of trust”, it is a strong and problematic term: talk of crisis can be self-fulfilling and is best avoided.

This aide memoire, along with the findings of the secondary data analysis on public trust in science provided on POIESIS D1.5: Integrity, Integration, and Institutions for Trust: Reflections Based on Secondary Data Sources, and the recommendations provided from the rest of the projects’ engagement activities on POIESIS D2.5: Cultivating chains of mediation to foster trust in science will be used as an input for the POIESIS Scenario Workshop (mid-May 2025, Brussels) which will co-create with stakeholders, with a focus on policy makers, the final POIESIS policy recommendations for tackling societal mistrust in science and for strengthening the co-creation of R&I contents by society. You can easily download all those documents here! 

Over the last few years, the POIESIS research team ran a series of engagement events addressing researchers, journalists, science communicators, institutional ethics officers, and citizens. Through 7 Public Deliberative Workshops, 119 Expert Interviews and a Survey Experiment involving 2847 participants, POIESIS focused on how different types of scientific communicators translate scientific information into various public domains and to different audiences (translation processes which we describe as “chains of mediation”).

Deliverable D2.5: Cultivating chains of mediation to foster trust in science describes in more detail this process and our main recommendations which could be summarised as follows:

• Research integrity practices tend to be indirectly inferred or embedded in the work that mediators provide to their audiences. At the same time, some mediators, particularly specialist science journalists, are important actors in exposing actual integrity or ethical problems in science and view this as a vital part of their professional role and their contribution to the public good.
• Closer to science, researchers and institutional ethics officers place greater emphasis on the importance of community norms and the formal procedures and processes that foster integrity and ethics in science. The outputs of their work may not always be shared directly with the public. However, they often do provide information and inputs to the work of mediators
• While the public seemingly recognizes the value of good research practices and are more trusting when research integrity and societal integration is secured, such practices should not be mistaken for a silver bullet for mediators or institutional actors trying to handle public (mis)trust of science.
• While greater public engagement can be beneficial, the desirable extent of citizen 16 involvement as well as the suitable topics that citizens can meaningfully contribute to, needs consideration.
• Chains of mediation should base their communication in scientific values, rigour of the scientific process and quality.
• Specific conditions call for specific forms of communication and/or dialogue, and the degree to which mediators can play a role as builders or maintainers of trust in science is clearly different across cases and contexts.

Those recommendations, along with the findings of the secondary data analysis on public trust in science provided on POIESIS D1.5: Integrity, Integration, and Institutions for Trust: Reflections Based on Secondary Data Sources, and the recommendations provided from the rest of the projects’ engagement activities on POIESIS D3.4:  How can institutions promote responsible research to enhance trust in science: An analytical aide memoire towards recommendations for maintaining trust will be used as an input for the POIESIS Scenario Workshop (mid-May 2025, Brussels) which will co-create with stakeholders, with a focus on policy makers, the final POIESIS policy recommendations for tackling societal mistrust in science and for strengthening the co-creation of R&I contents by society. You can easily download all those documents here! 

POIESIS D1.5: Integrity, Integration, and Institutions for Trust: Reflections Based on Secondary Data Sources contains reflections as well as the main findings of the secondary data curation, (re-) analysis, and synthesis that the projects’ WP1 has carried out.

Apart from secondary data on public trust in science (considering also data on research integrity and societal integration in this regard), consisting of  a comprehensive exploration of the field of surveys on trust in science in Europe, and an in-depth analysis of Eurobarometer data as well, this process also includes  a reflection on the concept of trust in science from theoretical, empirical and survey perspectives in two expert workshops with key survey operators across Europe as well as science communicators with experience in crisis communication (in Berlin, June 2023; Lisbon, February 2024; and one more in Paris also forthcoming , June 2025)

Those findings, along with the recommendations provided by the POIESIS engagement activities on POIESIS D2.5: Cultivating chains of mediation to foster trust in science and on POIESIS D3.4:  How can institutions promote responsible research to enhance trust in science: An analytical aide memoire towards recommendations for maintaining trust will be used as an input for the POIESIS Scenario Workshop (mid-May 2025, Brussels) which will co-create with stakeholders, with a focus on policy makers, the final POIESIS policy recommendations for tackling societal mistrust in science and for strengthening the co-creation of R&I contents by society. You can easily download all those documents here! 

The POIESIS 4th Newsletter includes our latest news and events, as well as the main findings of the projects’ Survey Experiment, Expert Interviews, and Round-table Workshops. You can download and learn about them just by clicking here!

POIESIS partners have conducted 7 Roundtable Workshops over the Autumn (one in each country) involving more than 84 institutional stakeholders across the 7 consortium countries (Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, France and Greece), some of them already involved in previous phases of the project, most notably on the Focus Groups study.

 The roundtables were designed to bring together institutional stakeholders in order 1) to assess the relevance and feasibility of the priorities identified in the focus group study (see D.3.2: Focus Groups – Findings. Exploring Institutional Roles in Fostering Public Trust in Science), 2) to explore the potential for translating these overarching priorities into concrete policy recommendations, while anticipating and addressing potential challenges to their implementation; and 3) to discuss the organizational tensions or forms of ambivalence inherent to scientific organizations.

Each roundtable highlighted the main priorities of the participants and the challenges they face. Beyond individual national examples, these priorities and insights reflect the diverse concerns of participants and the multifaceted nature of the challenges ahead.

Several cross-cutting insights emerged, which are crucial to informing and shaping the work that lies ahead:

• Consensus is not given: There was still a degree of heterogeneity in the way the priorities were received, both between participants at the same roundtables and between the different roundtables. A priority that appeared to be important in one case was not always considered as such in another context.
• Translating priorities into recommendations: while participants were invited to discuss the implementation of the priorities and the institutional difficulties likely to be encountered, a significant part of the discussions focused on the intrinsic value of the various priorities and how they could be formulated as recommendations.
• Double-edge argument: anticipating both the potential use and misuse of the priorities emerged as a central theme in the roundtable discussions. Participants highlighted that translating each priority into a policy recommendation carries the risk of different interpretations and applications. The final wording of any recommendation will require careful consideration of such ambivalence, ensuring a nuanced formulation that avoids oversimplification and takes full account of its wider implications.
• Expected qualities: discussions among participants helped to identify several key qualities that any recommendations should illustrate: a) they should be clearly linked to specific objectives; b) they should avoid merely paraphrasing existing recommendations; c) they should be targeted at easily identifiable groups; d) they should be actionable, leading to tangible and concrete results; and e) they should be realistic and adaptable, in line with available resources and the context in which they are to be implemented.

The roundtable discussions have highlighted the complexity and nuance required to translate identified priorities into actionable policy recommendations. While the common insights and goals identified with the focus groups were frequently, but not always, confirmed by the roundtables, the diversity of perspectives and contexts underscores the need for a flexible and context-sensitive approach.

The completion of the Roundtable Workshops marks the conclusion of the POIESIS engagement events and research activities. Their main findings and recommendations will be used as an input for the POIESIS final event, a Scenario Workshop which will be conducted in May in Brussels and will co-create with stakeholders, with a focus on policy makers, the final POIESIS policy recommendations for tackling societal mistrust in science and for strengthening the co-creation of R&I contents by society.

You can download and read the full results of the POIESIS Roundtables (D3.3) here.

A large survey was conducted over the Autumn involving 2847 respondents, a minimum of 400 in each of the projects’ Consortium countries (Denmark, Germany, United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, France and Greece).

The aim of the study was to experimentally investigate the effects of institutional commitment to research integrity and societal integration on public trust in science. To do so, we fielded a conjoint survey experiment in which levels of commitment to integrity and integration were randomly assigned to fictional university profiles. These were then evaluated by the survey respondents, who were asked how trustworthy they found the fictional universities.  

The key conclusions of the study are that:

• Consistent with the assumptions outlined in the POIESIS model, institutional commitment towards both research integrity and societal integration produces higher trustworthiness ratings.
• However, participants are not particularly sensitive to the level of commitment but rather whether commitment is present at all. That is, participants rate institutional commitment to national recommendations as highly as commitment to strict procedures, but both of these higher than lack of commitment.
• While all included forms of research integrity and societal integration positively affect trustworthiness ratings in all included countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and UK), patterns of magnitude vary. This indicates that while integrity and integration matter cross-contextually the specificities of their influence are sensitive to local and cultural factors.
• The effect of institutional commitment to research integrity and societal integration is generally not diminished by cues on the reputation of organizations, neither regarding their prestige nor achievements in specific fields of research. This implies that effects of commitment towards integrity and integration is not merely used as a proxy for institutional reputation but plays an independent role in shaping trust.
• The effects of institutional commitment to research integrity and societal integration are only sensitive to sociodemographic and attitudinal differences to a minor degree. However, one notable exception is prior trust in science which is highly related to the effectiveness of institutional commitment to research integrity and societal integration. Specifically, the effect of institutional commitment is confined to participants who indicate to trust science prior to the experiment (above 5 on a 0-10 scale), whereas respondents who have low levels of prior trust in science (5 or below) exhibit no differences in trustworthiness ratings across levels of institutional commitment.

To read the full results of the Survey Experiment download the Deliverable D2.4 here

On December 11, our sister project VERITY in collaboration with POIESIS and IANUS, hosted an inspiring and thought-provoking meeting on “The Role of Trust in Science for Effective Policy and Societal Progress.”

A special highlight of the event was the active participation of the European Commission, represented by Dr. Georgios Papanagnou and Fara Lledó San Mauro. Their presence and valuable contributions provided us with the latest updates and guidance on maximizing the impact of our projects, underscoring the significance of building trust in science for societal progress.

There were many insightful presentations and contributions from:

• European Commission representatives, Dr. Georgios Papanagnou and Fara Lledó San Mauro;
   
• VERITY Project, presented by Dr. Agata Gurzawska from Trilateral Research IE;
   
• The PREPARED Project, presented by Kalle Videnoja, an expert in international affairs at the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity;
   
• The University of West Attica (UniWa), with a presentation by Panagiotis Monachelis;
   
• IANUS, represented by Hub Zwart (Erasmus University of Rotterdam);
   
• POIESIS, represented by Leonidas Ananiadis (National Technical University of Athens) 

Lisa Haberlein from EUREC, who not only presented on the joint policy paper but also extended an invitation to the broader Trust in Science Cluster to contribute to this initiative, helping us develop feasible recommendations for enhancing societal trust in science

The meeting was skillfully moderated by Mathieu Rochambeau from EUREC, fostering an open environment for dialogue.

Let’s keep the conversation alive!

The POIESIS 4^th General Assembly was held in Aarhus on November 28^th and 29^th. With POIESIS results from the projects’ plethora of engagement events beginning to pile up, we are delighted that we are getting closer towards POIESIS final recommendations for Tackling Societal Mistrust in Science and for Strengthening the co-creation of Research & Innovation contents by society!!

Dr. Panagiotis Kavouras of the POIESIS NTUA team has presented online, aspects of the projects’ early findings at the 24th FERCAP International Conference 2024 “Maximizing Benefits through Responsible Conduct of Research”, which was held in Nepal.

The “Promoting Trust in Science” session where the presentation was made, included several other very interesting and impactful projects, like our sister project VERITY , ROSiE project, HYBRIDA, BEYOND, as well as initiatives related to Citizen Science, and insights from the European Network of Research Ethics Committees: EUREC.

The POIESIS NTUA Team conducted 16 interviews with 11 science communicators and 5 Researchers on COVID-19 and Climate Change over the course of the summer. Those were part of the total of 119 Expert Interviews that were conducted in the 7 European countries that participate in the project and explored how scientific information is transferred from the laboratory to the general public through ‘chains of mediation’.

Both mediators and researchers called for more action by Institutions, or even the creation of new ones to oversee the way science is communicated. Even though some of the interviewees advocated for the Reformation of some Institutions such as the Greek educational system, the trust in Institutions shown by them to enhance both science communication and science integration differs from results of previous POIESIS engagement events in Greece. More notably, the Public Deliberative Workshops produced at best mixed results regarding people’s trust in Institutions. This might probably relate to the fact that in this previous study the participants were lay people, while in the present study the participants were researchers and communicators.

Greek interviewees are also sensitised to Research Integrity-related issues, despite the fact that some of them often seem to lack the knowledge that they fall under the umbrella term of Research Integrity. That was exceptionally profound among others, on how they evaluate their sources of information and their own work.

Another result that was somehow unexpected is the awareness and acceptance by most of the interviewees of social integration. This specific aspect was a bit controversial at the Focus Group study of POIESIS, in the sense that social integration in the form of citizen science received both positive and negative response. In this study the responses were more homogeneous and more towards the positive side.

Other recommendations included: a) a wider dialogue between science and society regarding the conduct of research and the use of its outputs. Some mentioned basically informative and science integration events, others expressed the opinion that the public must have a say on the way the science outputs are used, b) more transparency in conducting research. This is meant to be used both on communicating and on conducting science as well, c) the creation of participatory and informative events.

You can read the Expert Interviews Findings and the Greek National Report by downloading “D2.3: Expert Interviews Findings” here.