(AGENPARL) – mar 04 ottobre 2022 to overcome them
. In so doing, I shall make reference to the experience of the natural
sciences, and the recent specialised subject of ‘Science of Science Communication’.
contributions relate to physics, chemistry, biology and medicine; however, there is little
skills to be
them, many similarities become apparent. Whatever
the subject, all popularising and educational activities consist in attracting your attention
to a complex concept and explaining it in words that you can understand. In this sense,
teaching you how to wash your hands correctly (and why it matters), how to calculate
compound interest (and why it may be useful), or how people have come to the conclusion
A further, important similarity consists in the fact that many of the messages that
eat less meat, vaccinate our children, install a cellular radio tower in the neighbourhood;
borrow money, or what the implications of a higher public debt are (a technology
that shifts the cost of some public goods from one generation to the next). Individuals
of those technologies. However, well-known cognitive shortcuts may result in biased or
education is not to tell people what their preferences should be, but how to make the
‘The problem of economic education’ is the title of a long article, published in July 1893 in
, which begins with this sentence: ‘The fact that there
as laid down by its professional exponents, and the thought of the public at large, as
The author (Simon Newcomb, an American mathematician) goes on to comment on
many examples of false beliefs, prejudices and misunderstandings, in particular on the
which hinder the dialogue
The latter point is a good example of a ‘divergence’ that persists. More than a century
later, in 1996, Paul Krugman again went through the nature of the cognitive obstacles
the popularisation of the natural sciences has a much longer and richer history, attempts
to make economics more accessible or to introduce the study of economics into school
education and/or the popularisation of economics,
is now established as one of its key functions. With a view to exploiting synergies, a few
This rising awareness extends beyond the world of central banks. In a recent book,
(2017), Jean Tirole makes a strong appeal to economists
to engage in public debate. Financial education, he says, should go beyond equipping
good. It is no easy task. Finance is an even trickier issue than comparative advantage as
a subject for reasoned discussion of pros and cons. Many will harbour deep suspicions
accept the opinion of ‘experts’ (in inverted commas) about its products. In the words
of Andrew Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England, a ‘great divide’ in
and may ultimately reinforce the public’s scepticism. One is the potential confusion or
receive from persons that are as much salespersons as advisers. The other is that even
academic or institutional economists disagree about many things, so what is the truth?
Financial education should therefore (a) recognise that being, and being perceived as,
minimum standards for professional advice; and (c) concentrate on basic, counterintuitive
In a 2009 paper entitled
(‘How to popularise science’),
– the dean of Italian popularisers, who passed away on 13 August and
whose great professional and civil merit we cannot but honour and commemorate on
this occasion – said that those who want to explain complex concepts need two qualities:
, i.e. able to capture an audience’s attention, and to
Failing to master them, or using them in an amateurish or ‘excessive’ way, can cause
, i.e. how to overcome the cognitive obstacles that are the main subject
As all teachers know, those who have a spontaneous interest in a topic will learn and
the stricter sense may be useful. Popularisation aims to generate interest and curiosity,
a museum or watching a documentary. Education aims to provide the basic skills needed
Well-managed popularisation is thus a way to provide the interest that helps make
educational activities successful: the goal is to make a subject as attractive as it is
just like poorly taught mathematics in school could result in a lifelong lack
With all that, the fact remains that some topics are perceived to be inherently more
interesting than others. Is economics more or less likely to be engaging than the natural
sciences? There is, in fact, no obvious answer. On the positive side, money being almost
ubiquitously necessary for survival and material needs, most of us, whatever our higher
aspirations, may be curious to understand both how the ‘wealth of nations’ is formed,
managed and invested. We are confronted with some of these issues on an almost daily
basis, and certainly more frequently than with those relating to the life cycle of dolphins
or the origin of galaxies. On the negative side, while curiosity about dolphins is usually
unalloyed in those that nurture it, issues about the economy, both personal and general,
beings’ instinctive preference for the short term—a feature whose evolutionary rationale
I shall not venture to discuss, but whose existence is plain. Akerlof and Shiller say: ‘when
we discuss the power of compound interest with our young students, their eyes glaze over.
enough to know what they will want to spend. […] It is as if they cannot attach any clear
Anna Maria
Her work is quoted by Akerlof
There are a few more problems that hinder the popularisation of economics:
What can we do?
to look for innovative ideas. There is no shortage of inspiring success stories,
connections to history, art and other subjects. The way we designed our museum, and
that our museum will contain some objects that are unusual and interesting enough to
Once one has managed to capture the public’s interest, the next challenge one faces is
language, or, more generally, any factors that can make communication easier, or more
fact that many concepts that experts take for granted may be quite unfamiliar to those
Clarity and simplicity, however, often come at a cost. When you try to make complex
even if you succeed in making the recipient understand the general way in which a
certain phenomenon works, you may have to pay the price of a blurred perception of its
In some cases, it is a fair price to pay; in others, it is a risky shortcut,
be undue generalisation: some people who read popularised science material, having
knowledge
Here too,
What can we do?
warnings about its inherent complexity, the loss of accuracy resulting from popularisation,
and the existence of any alternative explanations. With this issue in mind, the Bank’s
visitors additional material (brochures, apps or web channels) at various points along the
As I just mentioned, another trap to avoid is for science communicators to over-rely
on previous knowledge by recipients. Numbers, and in general everything to do
with statistics and mathematics, are a case in point. Experts often assume everyone
has some knowledge of what for them are very basic skills, such as the concept
of probability or the cancelling of fractions. In fact, mastery of such skills is rare.
, Roger Penrose tells the story of a
friend whom he used to tutor in mathematics and who, faced with simple fractions,
education and to the protection of banks’ customers. As I have said on other occasions,
rates of interest are not particularly useful to those consumers – a non-negligible
share, according to surveys – who are not fully familiar with the concept of interest
What can we do?
In 1948, Maria Montessori, one of the most renowned Italian educators,
wrote that ‘a person without mathematical training today is like an illiterate person was
when everything depended on literary culture’.
Nearly 80 years have passed, during
which the truth of this concept has (if anything) increased, as has the awareness of the
need to introduce statistics and probability into school curricula as early as primary school.
The ‘fear of maths’ is one big reason why too many people are unable to appreciate,
at school, there is no alternative to carefully crafting teaching materials or museum
explanations that do not assume a mathematical mind, and suggest intuitive, possibly
entertaining ways of understanding quantitative issues or solving practical problems,
advantage. The frustrating fact here is that a counterintuitive concept cannot be explained
even to people who are keen to understand, and educated enough to follow the experts’
explanations. ‘What I am concerned with – he writes – are the views of intellectuals,
engaging. The problem is that the listener has pre-formed convictions, alternative ‘truths’
that are perceived as intuitive and obvious, and clash with those of the expert. This is
what makes the latter’s arguments unpersuasive.
of Science Communication
(2017) lists many sources of alternative ‘truths’. They may be
Naïve science
. Psychologists have long theorised that human beings innately possess
some sort of pseudo-explanation for (almost) every phenomenon. In recent years, many
empirical studies have found evidence of folk physics, folk biology, folk economics and so
on. An article published in
in 2006 puts it as follows: ‘Folk astronomy,
élan
have been created ex nihilo by an intelligent designer. Folk psychology compelled us
to search for the homunculus in the brain – a ghost in the machine – a mind somehow
disconnected from the brain. Folk economics caused us to disdain excessive wealth,
Experts aver that ‘a fascinating feature of naïve theories is their ability to survive empirical
education programmes inspired by behavioural economics attempt to do: if folk
economics is a form of cognitive distortion,
the evolutionary outcome of a very long
then education should not just aim to teach skills, but also to challenge the instinctive
all parties
of a mortgage,
Disputes and hype in science
. It is perfectly normal for scientists to disagree on
the explanation of a given phenomenon. The inexact science of economics is second
you in making informed choices, should mostly be about the ABCs of disciplines,
assume that truths about nature must be immutable, coherent and all-encompassing,
facts of science.
breakthrough’, which makes the headlines as a result of an ambitious researcher, or
a journalist of a sensationalist bent trying to gain visibility, even if what is presented
the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and some forms of autism.
It took as
long as 12 years for the article, which had been recognised as not just wrong but also
fraudulent, to be taken out of circulation.
By then, however, fear and suspicion had
become rooted across broad sectors of the population—and, one surmises, this fact
contributed to the suspicion towards vaccines during the recent pandemic. Based on
Fake news
. If it is hard enough to keep the spread of erroneous information within the
trustworthy science news, and recommends that the school system take upon itself the
Antagonistic cultural meaning
. As shown by several Science of Science Communication
studies, in fact the credibility of science is not systematically in doubt. On the contrary,
‘the number of issues that actually display the science-communication problem is orders
of magnitude smaller than the number that do not, but plausibly could’
In fact, in the
vast majority of cases, the public does not mistrust the opinion of experts. Almost no one
the assessments of experts regarding the best way to build an airplane. The issue typically
when they are conceptually independent, they tend to interact and reinforce one another.
What can we do?
Despite evidence that it is not always impossible to change (erroneous)
there still
remain ‘a host of interdependent complexities for science communication, many of which
we are only beginning to understand empirically’.
The conclusion that the Science of
Science Communication has reached so far is that there cannot be a popularising or
cognitive obstacles, rely on a one-way style of communication and do not ask ourselves
The interdependency of channels can work in the communicator’s favour, too. When the
person or institution that sends a message is perceived as independent, authoritative
and credible, the ‘drag’ of impeding factors decreases. One hopes that central banks will
a broader range of needs), to lower costs, and to improve accessibility. One scarcely
remembers that to carry out the simplest banking operations, like checking the balance
of one’s account or making a money transfer, there was once no alternative to taking
the time to go to a physical bank branch and queue up at a teller. Or that POS or online
electronic payments did not exist. However, innovation also enables agents to create
whose economic rationale is not always obvious. The greater ease in making payments,
blessing, in that it may be conducive to hasty, imprudent or uninformed choices. Hence
the need to improve all areas of consumer protection, and to increase customers’ ability
to understand risks and rewards, to assess the suitability of products for their particular
needs, and more generally to exploit the undisputed advantages of innovation while
Financial education itself, like all kinds of education, can leverage on new technologies
the results achieved. It must, on the other hand, avoid the risk of turning the digital divide,
The Bank of Italy has taken on the challenge of digitalisation in its educational projects.
of 2019, and has over 50,000 hits per month. The portal’s content is supplemented by
interactive and multimedia tools meant to encourage the general public to engage and
identify with it, especially people who are less expert, and to stimulate them to learn
The web contains all sorts of information, including academic debates that were once
In principle, abolishing the barriers to the circulation of information is a good thing.
bias. While in theory everyone can access all information, in practice self-contained
bubbles may emerge (naturally or by deliberate action), whereby many web users receive
they become relatively insulated from information that might put them into question.
Breaking vicious circles generated by fake or biased information is thus one key challenge
been beyond the comprehension of most customers, but the phenomenon is very much
on the increase. While it was once conceivable for a car user to understand the practical
black box, even to a specialised mechanic, and almost all repair is based on automated
diagnosis and replacement. As products become more complex,
, the key to
this is the growing invisibility and abstract nature of innovation: in certain cases, such as
bio- or nanotechnologies, this has led to suspicion, fuelled conspiracy theories and made
Finance, which is a form of social technology, is no exception: innovations make it more
The last claim, admittedly, begs the question of why then some people are so
instruments-and much, much riskier, when unbacked or algorithmic. This seems
Thus, because of digitalisation, the educational challenge is simultaneously becoming
besides basic technical literacy, aim to augment ‘epistemic understanding
This concludes my introduction. I am sure that today’s keynote lecture, the round table
and the afternoon session on research will provide rich food for thought on all these
Thanks are due to Giovanni Iuzzolino for his valuable input.
This is no longer
a problem’
D. A., Jamieson, K. H. (2017),
Introduction:
Why Science
Kahan D, Scheufele
D. A. and Hall Jamieson, K. (eds.)
The Oxford Handbook of Science of Science
Communication
, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 1.
History Museum in London was established in 1753), the broad popularisation of science in all the forms
The Quarterly Journal of Economics
, Vol. 7,
‘One of the most marked points of antagonism between the ideas of the economists since Adam Smith
and those which governed the commercial policy of nations before his time is found in the case of
foreign trade. Before such a thing as economic science was known arose the theory of the “balance
advantageous to both, because the values which each exported to the other could not both be greater
than those received from the other. This doctrine was denied by the Physiocrats, and shown to be
, Paper for Manchester conference on free trade, March 1996
A key objective is improving the general awareness of central banks’ functions and tools. In 2006
the then-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston wrote: ‘In carrying out this very important
responsibility, we employ the carrot as well as the stick, as the saying goes. The stick is regulation and
supervision, and the carrot involves our convening abilities and, increasingly, our capabilities in the
, (2006), ‘The Role of Central Banks
in Economic and Personal Finance Education’,
https://www.bostonfed.org/news-and-events/speeches/
‘To borrow from the title of a recent book by Nobel Laureate economist Joe Stiglitz, these results
Andrew G.
The Great Divide
Evidence has become available of the synergies between popularisation and. See Wang S, Liu XF, Zhao
YD. ‘Opportunities to Learn in School and at Home: How can they predict students’ understanding of
International Journal of Science Education,
2012; 34(13):2061–88;
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine,
2019; 12 (5):5269–78;
and Cheng MM, Su CY,
Inquiry for Junior High School Students’,
Journal of Educational Computing Research,
whose motives are only intelligible to its initiates. When science is perceived as inaccessible sorcery,
anyone who is not a scientist may be pushed towards irrational positions and hopes […]: if science
becomes pseudo-magic, why not choose real magic?’
Parisi, G. (2021),
In un volo di stormi. Le meraviglie
dei sistemi complessi
Animal Spirits.
How human psychology drives the economy
Lusardi, A. and Mitchell, O. (2005), ‘Financial Literacy and Planning: Implications for Retirement
Wellbeing’, De
Bank Working Paper 78, December 2005.
Akerlof, G.A. and Shiller, R.J. (2009), cit., pp. 171-172.
to the public than is the case for the natural sciences: ‘Much of the time the transactions work fairly
smoothly. This is why microeconomics is often a story of the dog that did not bark in the night, which
in turn explains why non-economists are often unaware of any microeconomic problems’, Avinash Dixit
Microeconomics: A Very Short Introduction,
Such as, among others, the successful publication by William
Money Changes Everything.
How Finance made Civilization possible
(2006) or the ‘Money and Beauty’ exhibition held in Florence
just over ten years ago. For the general point, see Ogawa,
(2006), ‘Exploring possibility of
Journal of science education in
Japan
Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle, according to which whatever is gained by increasing the
precision with which we measure the position of a particle is lost in terms of the accuracy with which
we can measure its initial speed and vice versa.
Gouthier, D. (2019),
Scrivere di Scienza. Esercizi e buone
pratiche per divulgatori, giornalisti, insegnanti e ricercatori di oggi
, Codice Edizioni, Torino pag. 51.
Scharrer L, Rupieper Y, Stadtler M and Bromme
R. (2017), ‘When science becomes too easy: Science
popularization inclines laypeople to underrate their dependence on experts’,
Public Understanding of
Science
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
77, 1121
(1999). Francisco,
Frederico & Gonçalves-Sá,
Joana (2019), ‘A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing:
SSRN Electronic Journal,
Roger Penrose
La strada che porta alla realtà
The Road to Reality)
translation by
Maria Montessori,
Dall’infanzia all’adolescenza,
Garzanti, Milan 1949 (
the French edition had the title
when it comes to mathematics. Finance is a numbers game. And research by the Department for Business,
Innovation and Skills suggests there are an incredible 17 million adults in the UK whose standards of
mathematics are no higher than those of a primary school child. The way maths is taught may be part
lacks real-world relevance. Sad to say, payday lenders have a greater resonance to many people than
Pythagoras’s theorem. The abstract nature of mathematics, as taught, leads many children to tune out or
The Great Divide
‘Part of the solution may come from making maths relevant to people’s lives, to link it to real-world
budget of debits and credits; how to make sense of an Annual Percentage Rate on a loan; how to decide
The Great
‘My objective in this essay is to try to explain why intellectuals who are interested in economic issues so
consistently balk at the concept of comparative advantage. Why do journalists who have a reputation as
advantage, not only onto newspaper op-ed pages, but even into magazines that cheerfully publish long
discussions of the work of Jacques Derrida? Why do policy wonks who will happily watch hundreds of
hours of talking heads droning on about the global economy refuse to sit still for the ten minutes or so
Anderson, C. and Lindsay, J.J. (1998), ‘The development, perseverance and change of naive theories’,
Social Cognition
Naïve science may be seen as an example
of Kahneman’s ‘thinking fast’, i.e. instinctively avoiding spending energy on searching for the right
bias such as proximal thinking, myside bias, and the availability heuristic (see Kahneman, 2011)
can be linked to directional goals. Directional goals seem to be evoked when individuals are not
Dorothe
& Barbara K. Hofer (2014), ‘Addressing Challenges to Public Understanding of Science:
Epistemic Cognition, Motivated Reasoning, and Conceptual Change’
, Educational Psychologist
, DOI:
Paul H. Rubin, 2003, ‘Folk economics’
, Southern Economic Journal,
., Murch S.H., Anthony A., Linnell J., Casson D.M., Malik M., Berelowitz M., Dhillon
Thomson M.A., Harvey P., Valentine A., Davies S.E. and Walker-Smith J.A., ‘Ileal-lymphoid-nodular
Godlee F., Smith J. and Marcovitch
British Medical Journal
Man-pui, Jones, C. and Albarricìn
‘Countering False
Beliefs: An Analysis of the Evidence and Recommendation of Best Practices for the Retraction and
Oxford Handbook of Science of Science Communication
, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 342.
training and professional development opportunities for teachers should equip them with the necessary
Siarova, H., Sternadel, D. & Sz?nyi, E.
Parliament, Policy Department for Structural and Cohesion Policies, Brussels, p. 51.
Kahan, D. (2017), ‘On the Sources of Ordinary Science Knowledge and Extraordinary Science Ignorance’,
in Kahan D,
D. A. and Hall Jamieson, K. (eds.)
The Oxford Handbook of Science of Science
Communication
, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 36.
allegiance disable the faculties ordinary individuals normally use to discern what is known by science
and thus pollute the science communication environment’, Kahan, D. and Landrum, A.R. (2017),
A Tale of
two vaccines
, cit. p. 169. A similar case, which has been studied extensively in the literature, is the human
papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which is administered to teenage girls and which in several countries led
to a storm of controversy, a rejection of vaccination mandates, and a low take-up ratio. Several empirical
are likely to be the most polarized’ – but above all by the values of one’s social group: ‘those who prize
both traditional gender roles and also the autonomy of the individuals to make their decision about
how to provide for the wellbeing of themselves and their families, tended to perceive that the vaccine’s
A Tale of two vaccines
Kienhues, D., Bromme
R. and Stahl E. (2008), ‘Changing epistemological beliefs: The unexpected impact
British Journal of Educational Psychology
D. A., Hall Jamieson, K. (2017), ‘Conclusion – On The Horizon: The Changing Science
Communication Environments’, in Kahan D, Scheufele D. A. and Hall Jamieson, K. (eds.)
The Oxford
Handbook of Science of Science Communication
, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 466.
are still guided by the faulty expectation that there are monocausal explanations for most science
is little (social) science to support these expectations about problems or solutions’, Kahan D, Scheufele
D. A. and Hall Jamieson, K. (2017),
Conclusion – On The Horizon: The Changing Science Communication
Environments
Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI) (2020), G20 High-Level Policy Guidelines on Digital
Financial Inclusion for Youth, Women and SMEs.
OECD (2018), G20/OECD Policy Guidance on Financial Consumer Protection Approaches in the Digital Age.
delivery
practice.htm
#Republic: Divided democracy in the age of social media
, Princeton University Press, 2017.
understand
involves not just a few bits of knowledge or true beliefs, but some measure of
understanding’
Public Understanding of Science