| Abstract |
In turbulent times like the present, it becomes clear what influence science has on political and practical decisions In view of the climate crisis, questions of sustainability, the global decline in biodiversity or events such as the devastating forest fires in Australia or Brazil, it becomes clear that many global problems can only be solved by taking scientific findings into account Forest and forest-related policies need scientific knowledge Nevertheless, it is still a much-debated scientific question how scientific knowledge transfer works and how it can be improved (Böcher and Krott, 2016) While many approaches assumed early on that there can be no direct transfer of scientific knowledge into politics and rejected the so-called traditional linear models (Sokolovska et al , 2019), scientific knowledge transfer was understood primarily as communication that takes place between science, politics and practice and should be the object of improvement (Bubela et al , 2009) Further improvements were aimed at understanding the transfer of knowledge not unidirectionally but bidirectionally (Roux et al , 2006) - science also needs knowledge about political and practical needs in order to be able to react to them in a targeted manner Demands for more participatory approaches have been called for, particularly in environmental and sustainability policy In the processes of co-production between science, politics, business and citizens, scientific findings should lead to practical solutions that ultimately meet the demands of politics, science and society (Turnhout et al , 2020) Or, as a recent review article suggests, approaches to scientific knowledge transfer have changed in three major phases: from the linear phase, over an interactive phase, to the current phase of embedding, in which more emphasis is placed on co-production and the involvement of citizens and laypeople (Sokolovska et al , 2019) However, it must be emphasized that none of these approaches completely replaced others;rather, one can currently observe a scientific coexistence of different approaches in which even the linear model is still discussed and relevant (Durant, 2015) Recently, newer questions have been added to these long-established ones: On the one hand, a stronger public mistrust of science can be observed (Baron, 2020), which also has to do with the fact that citizens inform themselves about relevant issues in social media, in which anyone can act as an expert (Hopf et al , 2019) The quality of the information obtained there can often not be checked by laypersons and reliable sources cannot easily be distinguished from unreliable Others believe information above all when it is shared in their relevant peer groups (Kahan, 2012; Kahan, 2013) Examples are the rejection of vaccinations, even if there is good scientific evidence for them, or - very recently - the spreading of conspiracy theories in the course of new crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Calisher et al , 2020) In view of such phenomena there is even talk of the “death of expertise” (Nichols, 2017) - this argument is put forward by Tom Nichols, who observes an increasing rejection of established knowledge and makes it clear that with modern media anyone can become an expert, as long as he is only able to use the media to spread his views Nichols identifies a collapse of any division between experts and laypeople, which is encouraged by new information channels: “a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers - in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all” (Nichols, 2014) At the same time, a tendency is reviving according to which even due politics ignores and rejects scientific facts: Instead of the much demanded evidence-based policy, post-truth politics is gaining ground, which means political action that is not based on facts, or that relies on false information that is labelled as being an alternative truth (d Ancona, 2017) Countries such as the USA or Brazil are good examples - here presidents are in power who reject scientific findings on climate change and, as in the case of Trump, restructure entire institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which are actually supposed to provide science-based environmental policy information, without any longer considering all the scientific facts (Bravender, 2016; Dillon et al , 2018) In Brazil, President Bolsonaro is neglecting any responsibility of the Brazilian government for the Amazon rainforest fires whereas scientists argue that these are at least partly a result of Brazil's deforestation policy (Escobar, 2019) Thus, in addition to a social questioning and de-differentiation of scientific knowledge, a supposedly, very powerful new political rejection of scientific expertise is emerging
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