No. 113/2021

Columbia Law School in New York and an enthusiastic Twitter user. “The tone on Twitter is more relaxed in the US,” she observes. “Responses are less brusque and con- descending than in Germany, for instance.” Pistor’s posts cover current legal decisions in her special fields of cor- porate, business and transactional law as well as topics like graduation celebrations at her university or even the neighbour’s dog, Cucchi. “At the beginning, I was scepti- cal and thought tweeting was just eating up my time,” says the Max Planck Research Award Winner. But she decided to have a go. That was three years ago when she was writ- ing her legal book for non-specialists, “The Code of Capi- tal”. “I wanted to promote it on social media and resolved to have 1,000 followers by the time it was published,” she says. She easily achieved her goal – and became an enthu- siastic user. “You discover a lot about what’s going on, not least from people that you wouldn’t have much to do with otherwise,” Pistor concludes. Thanks to Twitter, she finds out about colleagues in other parts of the world, research- ers from other disciplines and good books. And she shares her own thoughts: “If you enjoy the luxury of being able to think about things in peace, you should also share your thoughts with a broader public,” she says. Nasty comments are the exception, which certainly has to do with the top- ics. After all, legal issues are seldom genuinely polaris- ing – but some posts do make emotions run high, even on her channel: “When I comment on bitcoins, for instance, I notice that this topic attracts a more aggressive target group,” Pistor reports. FIGURE 1 In your opinion, what role does science communication play in science and research? Science communication … … is part of a researcher’s job. … has a positive influence on a career in science. … advances science and research contentwise. … is essentially a way of promoting scientific institutions. … often presents research results inappropriately. … sacrifices quality in science and research. 24 14 14 12 8 3 49 38 37 39 30 15 21 28 36 38 47 47 4 9 8 7 8 30 2 12 4 4 7 4 completely disagree tend to disagree tend to agree completely agree cannot judge › Figures in percent. Discrepancies in totals caused by rounding. (n ≥ 5,659) Source for all figures see page 20. 15 HUMBOLDT KOSMOS 113/2021 Vaccine-induced damage up to 100% more likely ++FLU-VACCINE++ 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100