Bold ideas and critical thoughts on science.

Sami Nenno

Misinformation and Scientific Expertise in Talk Shows

In this short analysis Sami Nenno argues that increased representation of scientists can improve the information quality of talk shows.
3 February 2025

During the pandemic, the number of scientists invited to German political television talk shows strongly increased. However, before and afterwards, talk show guests came predominantly from politics and the media; scientists were and are a clear minority. Based on an empirical study of misinformation in German public television, Sami finds that scientists often challenged misinformation on the spot. Even if scientists are not the right candidates for all types of misinformation and there are good reasons not to think of science as a public correction machine, their presence had a beneficial effect.

Social media is not the only place for misinformation

The prevailing narrative about misinformation goes something like this: it is a social media problem that does not affect legacy media organisations. After all, traditional newspapers and broadcasters act as gatekeepers due to journalistic standards and verify information before publishing, right? This is likely the reason why research on misinformation is mostly confined to social media (Broda and Strömbäck 2024). But is this really the case? Are journalists the perfect gatekeepers? 

Some researchers would answer no. They argue that there are reasons for journalists to (unwittingly) reproduce misinformation even on legacy news (Tsfati et al. 2020). In accordance with them, I assume that news anchors or talk show moderators are often not able to prevent their guests from making inaccurate claims. This is how misinformation enters even long-established news and talk shows that have the greatest reach in their genre like Tagesschau, ZDF Heute Journal, Anne Will, Hart aber Fair, or Markus Lanz. 

In a recent study, I focused on live or interactive television formats or more specifically: public broadcasting news and talk shows. The results of the study confirmed my assumption: someone made a false claim in about every twentieth show and these were often not critically countered.

Misinformation is frequently spread in political talk shows

But let us take a step back and clarify the definitions. Why “misinformation” rather than “disinformation”? Disinformation is false information that is spread with a harmful intention. What I did in the study was to gather and match claims that have been labelled as inaccurate by fact-checkers with claims made on public broadcasting news and talk shows. These checked claims were not always entirely false but sometimes “just” misleading, exaggerated or unfounded. Additionally, it was not always possible to ascertain the intentions of the talk show guests or interviewees. This is why I have chosen to use the term “misinformation”, understood as information that is deficient and which may or may not be presented with harmful intentions.

Coming back to the results. I want to focus on the political talk shows for which the misinformation rate was higher (12%) than for the news shows (2%). In more than every tenth talk show, there was a person – predominantly a politician – who spread misinformation. For shows like Hart aber Fair (35%) or Maischberger (24%) the rate was higher and for others like Anne Will (7%) it was lower. For Caren Miosga’s talk show, there was even no match at all. 

Topics included allegations of bias in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution – the intelligence agency that investigates the far-right –, claims that social benefits attract migrants to Germany, and others. The misinformation often came from right-wing populist AfD politicians, who impugned public institutions, but in many cases, it also came from members of the conservative parties CSU and CDU, or other populist parties like BSW or Freie Wähler, who attacked other parties’ political courses. The governing parties – SPD, Greens, and FDP – had substantially lower rates and their claims were most often made to defend their own political decisions.

Scientists can help to tackle misinformation on the spot

Viewers are more likely to agree with extreme (political) positions, those typically associated with misinformation, if they are not challenged directly by the presenter or other talk show guests (Bolet and Foos 2023). Furthermore, the authors showed that when these claims are not challenged, the audience may come to believe that society at large supports these claims. This adds to the normalisation of extreme positions. 

In order to combat misinformation, some talk shows, like Hart aber Fair or Maischberger, publish fact-checks of claims made during the show on their website. It seems unlikely, however, that many viewers read these articles, and the fact-checks also miss a lot of misinformation. Regrettably, during the course of the show, the presenters were frequently unable to identify the misinformation and refute it. So, how can we ensure that misinformation on talk shows is challenged more consistently? This is when scientists enter the stage.

Talk show guests in Germany predominantly come from the worlds of politics or media (Fröhlich and Hillje 2020). Scientists and representatives from civil society are a clear minority. However, there have been exceptions. During the pandemic, the number of scientists – mostly virologists – almost tripled. Talk show hosts, for example, often posed the first and last question to the scientists and relied heavily on numbers and statistics, which were then explained by the researcher (Fedtke et al. 2023). These strategies likely helped to contain misinformation on Covid.

Science does not have all the answers – but it has some

Of course, science cannot counter all forms of misinformation. To illustrate, when Tino Chrupalla (AfD) erroneously asserted on the political talk show “Maischberger” that the Building Energy Act (Gebäudeenergiegesetz) requires citizens to “tear out” their gas heating systems, a politician or high-level civil servant would have been better placed to respond.

In other instances – for example, in the covid-19 pandemic – a scientific expert can provide beneficial input. The clearest example I found in my study concerns pull factors. These are factors that attract people to migrate to a specific country – in this case, Germany. Misinformation on this topic was one of the most frequent kinds I observed in my study. During talk shows, numerous politicians asserted that social benefits, such as Germany’s basic welfare benefit, Bürgergeld, serve as a crucial pull factor. There are many fact-checks from ARD, MDR and others that refer to scientific expertise and state that this claim is not correct. Similarly, cutting social benefits, for example, in the form of the Bezahlkarte, is unlikely to reduce migration either.

Scientists can provide live corrections

Staying with the example of pull factors, my study shows that challenges to misinformation increased when a scientist was among the guests. This is not a mere coincidence, as in these cases it was always the scientist who disagreed with the claim. This does not imply that all instances of this claim were refuted when a scientist was present, nor does it indicate that this claim was refuted exclusively by scientists. Nevertheless, there was a positive association between the presence of a scientist and challenges to misinformation.

If there is a positive association, and the number of scientists in talk shows grew during the pandemic, why did this number subsequently decline? A possible explanation is that the natural sciences still have more public authority than the social sciences (Lewis et al. 2023). Nobody would dare to call themselves an expert in quantum mechanics without having studied it. But even without academic training, everyone has opinions on societal questions because everyone is part of society. During the pandemic, it was not only but mostly virologists or physicists who were invited. Educational researchers, for example, enjoyed less public visibility. 

For discussions of migration and pull factors, social scientists are the right choice. For many people, the idea that the welfare state and social benefits constitute a pull factor has an intuitive appeal. Nevertheless, ultimately, this is an empirical question that requires testing; the results of existing studies do not provide definitive evidence in this regard (Kahanec and Guzi 2022; Müller 2023). Greater public understanding of the social sciences is therefore needed (Lewis et al., 2023).

Science is not a public correction machine

Is this the answer, then? Should we just invite more scientists to talk shows, at least for some topics? There are good reasons for caution. I want to name three.

First, not all scientists feel convenient or see the need to speak in public. People who choose a career in science may not necessarily feel called to provide information on public networks – and this is fine. Appearing in public – and especially on live television talk shows – is intimidating. When the person making false claims is a rhetorically skilled and influential politician, it is all the more daunting.

Second, science is not politics. It is important to recognise that if researchers engage with political issues too frequently, there is a risk of a politicisation of science (Reuschenbach and Frenzel, 2024). Currently, the German population places a high degree of trust in science (Best et al., 2023). This is partly because science is perceived as being free from political influence. Too much involvement in contentious discourses may have adverse outcomes, whereby the scientific community is held accountable for political decisions.

This relates to the third point: We live in a democracy, not a technocracy. Even if empirical findings suggest that measures like the Bezahlkarte won’t have a significant impact on the number of refugees, its introduction was a legitimate democratic decision by elected decision makers who represent the society. Politics should listen to science, but in the end, it is democratically elected representatives who make the choices.

In conclusion, misinformation is spread not only on social media but also on public broadcasting networks and especially on talk shows. The presence of scientists in these formats can help, and there is certainly a representation gap. However, it is rather about finding the sweet spot than adding a scientist for every politician.

Author info


Sami Nenno is a postdoc at TU Dresden and associated researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14793676

Cite as

Nenno, S. (2025). Misinformation and Scientific Expertise in Talk Shows. Elephant in the Lab. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14793676

References

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Best, V., Decker, F., Fischer, S., & Küppers, A. (2023). Demokratievertrauen in Krisenzeiten: Wie blicken die Menschen in Deutschland auf Politik, Institutionen und Gesellschaft? Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

Bolet, D., & Foos, F. (2023). Media Platforming and the Normalisation of Extreme Right Views (SSRN Scholarly Paper 4548420). Social Science Research Network. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4548420

Broda, E., & Strömbäck, J. (2024). Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news: Lessons from an interdisciplinary, systematic literature review. Annals of the International Communication Association, 48(2), 139–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2024.2323736

Fedtke, J., Ibahrine, M., Zaid, B., & Shin, D. D. (2023). Containing a Corona Misinfodemic and Covidiocy: Political Talk Shows on German Public-Service TV. Journalism Practice, 17(8), 1740–1754. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2021.2004201

Fröhlich, P., & Hillje, J. (2020). Die Talkshow-Gesellschaft. Repräsentation und Pluralismus in öffentlich-rechtlichen Polit-Talkshows. Progressives Zentrum. https://www.progressives-zentrum.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Studie_Die-Talkshow-Gesellschaft-1.pdf

Kahanec, M., & Guzi, M. (2022). Welfare Migration. In K. F. Zimmermann (Ed.), Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics (pp. 1–23). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57365-6_95-1

Lewis, J., Bartlett, A., Riesch, H., & Stephens, N. (2023). Why we need a Public Understanding of Social Science. Public Understanding of Science, 32(5), 658–672. https://doi.org/10.1177/09636625221141862

Müller, T. (2023). Evidence for the Welfare Magnet Hypothesis? A global examination. https://doi.org/10.18452/27949
Reuschenbach, J., & Frenzel, K. (2024). Defekte Debatten: Warum wir als Gesellschaft besser streiten müssen. Suhrkamp Verlag.

Tsfati, Y., Boomgaarden, H. G., Strömbäck, J., Vliegenthart, R., Damstra, A., & Lindgren, E. (2020). Causes and consequences of mainstream media dissemination of fake news: Literature review and synthesis. Annals of the International Communication Association, 44(2), 157–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.2020.1759443

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