How far does your expertise reach? Ethical challenges of communicating scientific knowledge

Did you notice how few female scientists were quoted as experts in the media during the pandemic? As we were analyzing our data for the Belgian Pandemic Intelligence Network, we found that, on average, only 20% of experts mentioned in news about the COVID-19 pandemic were women, when they represent 34% of researchers in Belgium according to the OECD.1 We are exploring why this is the case, but a reasonable hypothesis comes from the evidence that women are less likely to consider themselves expert “enough” to confidently answer the questions of a journalist. 

In 1978, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes coined the term impostor syndrome to define this tendency. “Impostor syndrome arises when high-achieving individuals like women in science, who, despite their successes, fail to internalize their accomplishments, competence or skill and have persistent self-doubt and fear of being exposed as intellectual fraud”. 2 Women are not the only ones who experience this, research shows anybody can be affected. 

Much more recently, in 2019, Nathan Ballantyne put a name to an opposing phenomenon that has also probably existed since the dawn of science: epistemic trespassing. “Experts drift over a highly visible boundary line and into a domain where they lack either the relevant evidence or the skills to interpret the evidence well. But they keep talking nonetheless. [...] They may find trespassing all but impossible to resist.” 3 This is often unintentional, and the current trend of interdisciplinary research to address wicked problems provides a fertile ground for overstepping disciplinary boundaries. 

Karlsruhe’s Manneken Pis double  \ frennlareo, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

Both phenomena can have ethical implications for science communication. The impostor syndrome may silence voices that could contribute more diversity of perspectives to scientific dialogue. Epistemic trespassing is problematic because it can cause harm to others: the social authority of a scientist may foster people to believe something that is not accurate, just because they say it, even if they are not an expert in that specific field.4 “[E]pistemic trespassing is wrong because it is an abuse of expert authority” that “makes non-experts vulnerable”.5

Epistemic trespassing and impostor syndrome are not only bad in specific situations. They can also affect the general trust of citizens in science.4 Trespassers force the actual experts to defend the knowledge of their discipline and spend energy correcting the wrong statements, adding unnecessary uncertainty to scientific consensus… often already hard to reach.5 Scientists suffering from impostor syndrome, with their silence, may reinforce the image of science as an elitist activity, not open to people with different backgrounds. 

Who is responsible for solving the ethical challenges posed by these problematic practices? Science communicators and journalists can take an active role in encouraging a diversity of researchers to share their experience and help them not to overreach their disciplinary expertise. 

Science journalist Ed Yong argues that “finding diverse sources, and tracking them, takes time, but not that much time”.6 He calculated 15 minutes per article. It is an effort worth doing to counter the perverse effect of simply interviewing the most visible scientists in a field, which may have that position due to many structural factors that generate unequal opportunities.7

In Belgium, the francophone professional journalists’ association (AJP) has set up Expertalia.be in attempt to facilitate contact with a diversity of experts, while the Flemish government has created ExpertenDataBank.be.

What can scicomm professionals do to prevent epistemic trespassers from sharing nonsense? A good approach is to be explicit and systematic at stating the field of expertise of the scientist. Don’t be scared to ask them about the reach of their knowledge. When a statement seems to go beyond it, apply healthy skepticism: reach out to experts in the relevant field to double check what you’ve been told and relate it to the scientific consensus in that field.8 

Scientists themselves also need to take responsibility, finding the right balance between being brave and humble. They can seek training in science communication to feel more at ease and overcome impostor syndrome. And they also need to be self-aware of their disciplinary limits and be transparent about them: warn your audience when you think you may be overstepping the boundaries.4 When this happens, you could also refer to one of your colleagues in another field. 

General ethical principles of science communication for scientists are always a good antidote: honesty, precision, adapting to your publics, transparency about the scientific process, and being explicit about uncertainty of your conclusions.9 

In any case, even with the best of intentions, the trespasser may not know or may not want to acknowledge the limited reach of their expertise. This is a typical example of the Dunning-Kruger effect10, when people without expertise in a field feel overconfident and are ignorant of their ignorance. That is why the debate about who should be morally responsible for upholding the ethical principles of science communication is still open. We propose that fighting epistemic trespassing and fostering diversity of scientific sources is a collective responsibility. 

Satirical diagram inspired by the XY scatter plot representation of data from the original Dunning and Kruger study and illustrating a subject’s self-report during skill acquisition \ 7804j, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Epistemic trespassing is not all bad news, though. It has actually been “essential for the advancement of science” and nowadays is “virtually inevitable”.8 

A historic example: as a meteorologist, John Dalton, was not bound to a chemist’s point of view, which in 1803 allowed him to develop the atomic theory that is foundational of modern chemistry. The key is having intellectual modesty, and to engage in a respectful dialogue with the experts of the multiple fields that may enrich the answers to the complex questions that science is addressing.

John Dalton, a meteorologist trespassing into chemistry \ Henry Roscoe, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

References

1. OECD (2021). Main science and technology indicators.

2. Paterson, R., & Vincent-Akpu, I. F. (2021). Impostor syndrome with women in science. In Science by women: Stories from careers in STEM (pp. 83-98). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

3. Ballantyne, N. (2019). Epistemic trespassing. Mind, 128(510), 367-395.

4. Gerken, M. (2018). Expert trespassing testimony and the ethics of science communication. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 49, 299-318.

5. DiPaolo, J. (2022). What’s wrong with epistemic trespassing?. Philosophical Studies, 179(1), 223-243.

6. Yong, E. (2018). I spent two years trying to fix the gender imbalance in my stories. The Atlantic, 6.

7. Ylijoki, O. H. (2022). Invisible hierarchies in academic work and career-building in an interdisciplinary landscape. European Journal of Higher Education, 12(4), 356-372.

8. Pavličić, J., Dimitrijević, J., Vučković, A., Đorđević, S., Nedeljković, A., & Tešić, Ž. (2024). Friend or foe? Rethinking epistemic trespassing. Social Epistemology, 38(2), 249-266.

9. Keohane, R. O., Lane, M., & Oppenheimer, M. (2014). The ethics of scientific communication under uncertainty. Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 13(4), 343-368.

10. Hahn, U., & Lewandowsky, S. (2024). What the pandemic showed us about reason and values. In Philosophy, Expertise, and the Myth of Neutrality (pp. 147-165). Routledge.