Epistemic trespassing, the logic of markets, populism and open science – interview with Prof. Lisa Herzog
Following her participation in the plenary session “Trust in Science – Conceptualizing Trust in Science” at the 2024 World Science Forum in Budapest, Prof. Lisa Herzog, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Groningen, discussed the complex relationship between knowledge, science and democracy. As our societies are faced with an increasingly complex set of challenges, the question of how we produce, distribute and utilise knowledge in our societies becomes ever more critical.
In an era of unprecedented data availability and computational power, one might expect that decision-making and policy formation would have become more straightforward and effective. According to Prof. Herzog, however, the relationship between knowledge, science and democracy is far more complex and nuanced than it might appear at first glance. As our societies grapple with increasingly complex challenges, the question of how we produce, distribute and utilise knowledge becomes ever more critical.
Prof. Herzog, whose recent book The Citizen Knowledge Markets: Experts and the Infrastructure of Democracy, explores these themes, argues that democratic societies require specific mechanisms for creating and transmitting knowledge to function properly. They often fail, however, to invest in the infrastructures necessary to ensure this knowledge reaches the citizenry effectively. This disconnect between the availability of knowledge and its practical application in democratic decision-making represents a fundamental challenge for modern societies.
Another challenge lies in the different mechanisms through which knowledge is produced and utilised in society. Prof. Herzog identifies three distinct spheres: markets, expert communities and public deliberation for policy decision-making. Each operates according to its own logic and can become corrupted within its domain. For instance, public deliberation can become dysfunctional when extreme political polarisation leads people to prioritise antagonising each other over finding common solutions and compromises. This dysfunction can severely impair the ability of democratic societies to address complex challenges effectively.
The shifting boundaries between these different knowledge-production logics can also become problematic. Prof. Herzog points to the dominance of market thinking in recent decades as a particular concern: “The logic of markets has been applied to lots of other social spheres where it is not the right type of logic to apply.” She illustrates this with the example of the scientific system, where the introduction of market-like competition metrics has led to problematic incentives, particularly for young scholars. The pressure to publish extensively has raised questions about reproducibility and the overall functionality of the system. This marketisation of science ultimately leads to the current state of affairs where serious concerns about the quality and reliability of scientific knowledge production have been raised.
When it comes to the relationship between science and society as a whole, Prof. Herzog advocates for public funding while acknowledging the difficulty of measuring scientific output adequately. She argues that public funding is crucial because “if there is no publicly available knowledge of certain kinds, then often you would only have private actors who produce that kind of knowledge, but then you cannot hold them to account.” This type of concentration of knowledge in private hands, whether corporations, NGOs, or religious groups, would leave society without the means to verify or challenge their claims. The importance of maintaining public control over knowledge production should be essential for a well-working democratic society.
Public funding for science does not mean that scientific endeavour should be entirely directed by public demand. While it is reasonable for democratic societies to prioritise certain research areas, such as renewable energy, the scientific process must be allowed to follow its own logic: “You need to let scientists explore things according to the best available methodologies.”
She also stresses the importance of maintaining support for fundamental research, noting that sometimes the most important breakthroughs happen unexpectedly. This balance between public accountability and scientific autonomy represents a crucial and persistent challenge for scientists working in modern democracies. While Prof. Herzog does not entirely dismiss quantitative metrics, she advocates for a more nuanced approach that prioritises quality and content over secondary indicators like journal rankings and citation indices.
She argues that proper evaluation requires engaging directly with the research: “You really have to read someone’s paper, look at someone’s databases and really say ‘Okay, what does this give us? Is it good science in our field?’” This approach becomes particularly challenging when comparing research across different disciplines, each with their own methodologies and quality standards. To make her point clearly, Prof. Herzog points to her own field of philosophy, where citation metrics can be misleading: “If you write up a very bad argument and you get it published, you will get lots of citations because lots of people will attack your bad argument and say, ‘Look, this is really bad.’” This demonstrates how simplistic metrics can fail to capture the true value and quality of scholarly work.
“All data need to be interpreted”
In our data-rich world, Prof. Herzog also draws an important distinction between data availability and genuine knowledge. “All data need to be interpreted,” she explains. “You can look at data clouds from different perspectives, you can ask different questions, and you also need to have the right methodologies.” She emphasises that while data can reveal correlations, understanding causal mechanisms requires additional qualitative research to explore the underlying phenomena. This distinction becomes particularly crucial as societies increasingly rely on data-driven decision-making.
Addressing the central themes of this year’s World Science Forum, the decline of trust and the growing anti-elitist sentiment targeting scientists, Prof. Herzog suggests that much of populism’s appeal stems from broader societal issues: “People do not feel respected, and they do not feel they have good chances in the economy.” This has led to a perception of science as serving the financial elites rather than ordinary people. She argues that this perception is often reinforced by traditional approaches to science communication, where the public is expected to come to universities and research centres for lectures. Instead, she advocates for more inclusive approaches, suggesting that scientists should take the conversation to the public places where people actually are.
“It would be very important for science to be more open to people from all walks of life.”
That said, scientists must be also careful about their role in public discourse. Prof. Herzog highlighted the phenomenon of “epistemic trespassing”, where experts overstep their authority by speaking about matters outside their expertise. She argues that scientists should maintain their focus on evidence-based discourse within their fields of expertise rather than attempting to become more political figures. This distinction becomes particularly important in highly politicised fields of research, where maintaining scientific integrity while engaging with public discourse can be especially challenging. Such fields, for example, gender studies or Middle Eastern studies, have become extremely politicised due to external attacks rather than by their own choice. We cannot leave it to the scientists working on these highly polarised fields to explain the general role of science and the mechanisms of science. “The scientific community as a whole, which still enjoys a lot of trust, needs to share this responsibility.”
Maintaining the high ideals and values of scientific research is another constant complex challenge that affects the scientific community. While we should acknowledge that scientists themselves are all “children of our time”, and therefore constantly influenced by their actual social context, Prof. Herzog argues that maintaining scientific ideals remains crucial. “I think we need the ideal to give us guidance as to the direction into which we should go.” Just following the norms of their social circles would give researchers too narrow objectives. She advocates for greater diversity in science, suggesting that “it would be very important for science to be more open to people from all walks of life.” This would ensure a broader representation of different values within the scientific system, and therefore science would no longer be perceived as the endeavour of a certain elite group.
Talking about the social media’s role in political and societal polarisation, Prof. Herzog offers a more nuanced perspective than many of her contemporaries. While not dismissing social media’s influence entirely, she points out that polarisation, particularly in the US, predates social media, citing talk radio as an earlier driver of political division. And while she acknowledges that social media can enable people with extreme views to find each other more easily, creating potentially dangerous echo chambers, she also points to research which suggests that social media actually exposes many people to diverse news sources and political views thanks to varied social connections they have in these networks.
Therefore, when discussing the problem of societal polarisation, Prof. Herzog advocates for a broader examination of our “epistemic infrastructure” rather than focusing solely on social media. She emphasises that the medium matters less than the quality of information and how people relate to it. Moreover, she warns against naivety in discussions about the efficacy of science communication, pointing out that some actors deliberately seek to create confusion and spread misinformation: “Sometimes it is really a conscious attempt to confuse people to make them believe certain things.”
She points to specific examples, such as how RT (once Russia Today) in Germany attempts to present itself as “just another trustworthy public medium.” As Prof. Herzog notes, in discussing the problems of science communication, maybe we have been sometimes a little bit naive thinking that there are only structural problems, when in fact sometimes there have been conscious attempts to confuse people and make them believe certain things.
Prof. Herzog’s insights reveal the complex interplay between knowledge, science and democracy in our modern world. Her analysis suggests that addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted approach that considers the various mechanisms of knowledge production, the relationship between science and society, and the broader social and economic contexts in which these dynamics play out. As we continue to grapple with issues of polarisation, misinformation and the role of expertise in democracy, her perspective advocates for building more effective epistemic infrastructures that will serve all members of society equally, while at the same time maintaining the integrity of science and guaranteeing the autonomy necessary for meaningful scientific progress.