This highlight is dedicated to Bradshaw's call for interdisciplinary research in this issue, i.e. stressing the importance of microbiological literacy in the current zeitgeist and the contribution that collaboration between microbiologists and social scientists can make to this. I, as social scientist and science communication researcher, want to take his call one step further by arguing that the examples he illustrates are also examples of transdisciplinary research, and argue that this approach can make a contribution to the field of microbiological research.

Transdisciplinary research, i.e. scientific inquiry that cuts across disciplines ‘to overcome the mismatch between knowledge production in academia, on the one hand, and knowledge requests for solving societal problems, on the other' (Hadorn et al., 2008, p.4) understands that if we want to solve complex societal problems, these problems should be accounted for in collaboration across, but also transcend scientific disciplinaries. Take for example the quick emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has its roots in microbiology, but impacted politics, science, the environment and society and is dealt with in all of these domains, making it a socioscientific issue. Citizens have often felt left out in the decision-making process surrounding COVID-19 (e.g. before in safety measures, now in vaccine passports) which led to protests and incomprehension between various layers within society. More than enough information was communicated about the virus and affiliated measures by the government and science, but people felt misunderstood and unheard: a communication mismatch. In this abundance of COVID-19 information, how come so many people have attained a different perspective on COVID-19?

A frequently heard explanation for the mismatch is society's lack of microbial/scientific literacy. It is evident that society's understanding of microbes (microbial literacy) to make informed decisions regarding vaccination and safety measures and to be able to critically assess discourse in these areas has played a role here. Timmis et al. (2019) previously reported on the urgent need for microbial literacy in society, especially in relation to the emergence of such pandemics. However, how citizens make sense of COVID-19 on the micro-level (i.e. everyday conversations and experiences) often relies on emotions and feelings they acquire in conversations with acquaintances rather than on rational, factual communication by governmental instances (Rerimassie et al., 2021). Apparently, there is a whole world where individual sensemaking takes place and where scientific, evidence-based knowledge seeps in only to a very limited extent, especially in hard-to-reach audiences with low literacy, such as local and rural communities, and individuals that are not interested in science topics (Milani et al., 2021). There again we see this mismatch appearing: a discrepancy between science's information dissemination practices and people's sensemaking of science-related phenomena and events. How science and policymakers address society has not had the desired effect, making some of the current communication channels inadequate.

To explain this mismatch, we can take on a social scientist's perspective, where we focus on the term literacy. Literacy has long been scrutinized in the field of science communication and science–technology–society studies (Liu, 2009; Sismondo, 2010; Valladares, 2021). Literacy is often associated with the concept of deficit-thinking: the persistent view within science that assumes that society's mistrust towards science is grounded in a deficit of citizens' scientific knowledge, and society is therefore responsible for conflicts and misunderstandings between science and society. If they would only understand science better, they would be less opposing to scientific innovations. To overcome this knowledge deficit, it has been thought that scientists should better inform and educate society, therewith restoring society's trust in science. This has been a common approach for decades and even though science literacy in society has slowly increased over this period of time, there still are large variations in literacy within society (e.g. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, 2016), indicating that there are illiterate publics that are not reached by our information and education efforts.

Another rationale in deficit-thinking is that citizens let emotions and values interfere in how they take up information, which would make citizens by definition unfit to come up with decisions in complex issues that require rationality well-informed choices. Academic training, conversely, should enable scientists to exclude emotions and values in our work and help provide untainted evidence-based information that is required to participate in debates about socioscientific issues and decision-making. This belief, the belief that the public is emotional and ignorant whilst science is rational and reliable, is still common in scientists nowadays (Barendse et al., 2021). Such deficit-thinking views demarcate science from society in a problematic way and disregard the previously mentioned sensemaking practices of citizens, eventually contributing to polarization between science and society.

I, therefore, applaud the views of Timmis et al. (2019), who look at the term literacy from a different perspective: they follow the belief that broad and freely available education enables citizens to become literate and correctly inform themselves and others, but, more importantly, should empower citizens to participate in debates and deliberation. ‘The goal of all science education or science communication research should be to foster critical engagement rather than blind devotion’ (Baram-Tsabari and Osborne, 2015, p. 138) – to reduce the epistemic distance between scientists and lay people, we should attempt to engage the public in dialogue rather than focus on dissemination of content knowledge. This is one of the key pillars of transdisciplinary research: equally valuing scientific knowledge and experiential knowledge. If we recognize the socio in socioscientific issues, the citizen suddenly becomes an expert. This creates support, trust and equality, and highlights important aspects to a research subject that researchers would not have thought of themselves.

Then the question remains what engaged publics in the dialogue surrounding socioscientific issues implies for microbiology research. In this issue, Bradshaw provides the example of Lorimer et al. (2019)'s participatory genomics, illustrating how new knowledge about hygiene practices in the composition of the domestic microbiome was co-created by microbiologists in collaboration with citizen participants via collaborative research design, experimentation and result interpretation – a symbiose of microbiologists' knowledge and experiential knowledge. Citizens are consults in this example and are only involved in a small part of the research process, that of data collection. The other example of Bradshaw (political cyanobacteria; Waterton and Tsouvalis, 2015) takes transdisciplinarity one step further: in the local issue of a lake polluted by algae, microbiologists, social scientists, citizens, farmers and other stakeholders were involved in multiple steps of research and subsequent decision-making. Opening up this issue to a broader set of stakeholders shed new light on the potential origins of the algae pollution would not have occurred mono-disciplinary researchers (substantive reasoning), while simultaneously creating support and trust within and between everyone involved.

These are prime examples of the benefits of transdisciplinary research with microbiologists, but transdisciplinary research also has applications that go beyond laboratory research and solving local problems. Scientific knowledge and experiential knowledge can also be used to collaboratively determine desired futures for science and society. Citizens must then be involved in the process from the outset, because ‘if we want to develop applications robustly and in the public interest, it is important to organize reflexive strategies of assessment and engagement in early stages of development.’ (Betten et al., 2018, p. 21). For instance, in a recent joint-project by Betten et al. (2018) and Stemerding et al. (2019), synthetic biology researchers and societal stakeholders came together to co-create future scenarios about antibiotic resistance and renewable energy. The aim was to create a transdisciplinary guideline for future innovations in both fields, taking into account both technological options and societal objectives. Their concept of building future scenarios as a tool for responsible research and innovation consisted of two trajectories. The researchers followed a technological options-oriented approach to explore the plausibility and feasibility of innovations that might be involved in the future of antibiotic resistance and renewable energy. Societal stakeholders, on the other hand, followed a societal objectives-oriented approach and examined the nature of such future scenarios as well by exploring the needs, values and purposes of the societal challenge and the potential role of synthetic biology herein. Finally, both parties were asked to share their findings in workshops – ‘a dialogue in which connections are made between societal goals and technology’ (Stemerding et al., 2019, p. 219) – and came to a mutual understanding regarding these possible futures.

The approach of constructing future scenarios in a transdisciplinary fashion is not only limited to research but also already has application within public health, for example with the One Health approach that was started with the WHO. I argue that this approach is applicable to all microbiology-related crises as described in Timmis et al. (2019): the antibiotic resistance crisis; the return of virtually eradicated childhood diseases; the rise of allergies; the greenhouse gas crisis; the soil crisis; and the pollutant accumulation in the environment and food web. Not only literacy is important to collaboratively solve these crises but also the experience of society is important and in similar fashion are these issues not just scientific-microbial issues but socioscientific issues. The responsibility, therefore, lies with all of those involved (public, scientists, policymakers) for both applying transdisciplinary approaches as well as solving of the crises that threaten our existence.

这一亮点致力于 Bradshaw 呼吁在这一问题上进行跨学科研究，即强调微生物素养在当前时代精神中的重要性以及微生物学家和社会科学家之间的合作可以对此做出的贡献。作为社会科学家和科学传播研究员，我想更进一步，认为他举例说明的例子也是跨学科研究的例子，并认为这种方法可以为微生物研究领域做出贡献。

跨学科研究，即跨学科的科学探究，“一方面克服学术界知识生产与解决社会问题的知识需求之间的不匹配”（Hadorn等， 2008，p.4）理解如果我们想解决复杂的社会问题，这些问题应该在跨学科的合作中得到解决，但也应该超越科学学科。以迅速出现的 COVID-19 大流行为例，它起源于微生物学，但影响了政治、科学、环境和社会，并在所有这些领域得到处理，使其成为一种社会科学问题。公民经常感到在围绕 COVID-19 的决策过程中被排除在外（例如之前的安全措施，现在是疫苗护照），这导致了社会各阶层之间的抗议和不理解。政府和科学界就病毒和相关措施传达了足够多的信息，但人们感到被误解和闻所未闻：沟通不匹配。在如此丰富的 COVID-19 信息中，为什么这么多人对 COVID-19 有不同的看法？

对于这种不匹配，一个经常听到的解释是社会缺乏微生物/科学素养。很明显，社会对微生物的理解（微生物素养）在疫苗接种和安全措施方面做出明智的决定，并能够批判性地评估这些领域的话语，这在这里发挥了作用。蒂米斯等人。（2019 年）之前曾报道过社会迫切需要微生物素养，特别是与此类流行病的出现有关。然而，公民如何在微观层面（即日常对话和经历）理解 COVID-19 往往依赖于他们在与熟人的对话中获得的情感和感受，而不是政府实例的理性、事实交流（Rerimassie等人，  2021 年）。显然，整个世界都在进行个人意义建构，而科学、循证知识只能在非常有限的范围内渗透，尤其是在当地和农村社区等难以接触到的识字率低的受众和个人中对科学主题不感兴趣的人（Milani等人，  2021 年）。我们再次看到这种不匹配出现：科学的信息传播实践与人们对科学相关现象和事件的意义构建之间的差异。科学和政策制定者如何应对社会并没有产生预期的效果，使得当前的一些沟通渠道不足。

为了解释这种不匹配，我们可以从社会科学家的角度来看，我们将重点放在识字这个词上。长期以来，科学传播和科学-技术-社会研究领域一直在审视扫盲（Liu,  2009 ; Sismondo,  2010 ; Valladares,  2021）。读写能力通常与赤字思维的概念相关联：科学界的一贯观点认为社会对科学的不信任是基于公民科学知识的不足，因此社会应对科学与社会之间的冲突和误解负责。如果他们能更好地理解科学，他们会较少反对科学创新。为了克服这种知识缺陷，人们认为科学家应该更好地为社会提供信息和教育，从而恢复社会对科学的信任。几十年来，这一直是一种常见的方法，尽管社会中的科学素养在这段时间里缓慢增加，但社会内部的科学素养仍然存在很大差异（例如，美国国家科学、工程和医学研究院，  2016 年），表明有是我们的信息和教育工作无法触及的文盲公众。

赤字思维的另一个基本原理是，公民让情绪和价值观干扰他们获取信息的方式，从定义上讲，这会使公民不适合在需要理性、明智选择的复杂问题上做出决定。相反，学术培训应该使科学家能够在我们的工作中排除情感和价值观，并帮助提供参与有关社会科学问题和决策的辩论所需的无污染的循证信息。这种信念，即公众情绪化和无知，而科学是理性和可靠的信念，在当今的科学家中仍然很普遍（Barendse et al .,  2021）。这种思维缺陷的观点以一种有问题的方式将科学与社会区分开来，并且无视前面提到的公民的意义建构实践，最终导致科学与社会之间的两极分化。

因此，我赞赏 Timmis等人的观点。（2019 年），他们从不同的角度看待“识字”一词：他们相信广泛和免费的教育可以使公民识字并正确地了解自己和他人，但更重要的是，应该使公民能够参与辩论和审议。“所有科学教育或科学传播研究的目标应该是培养批判性参与，而不是盲目投入”（Baram-Tsabari 和 Osborne，2015 年），页。138）——为了缩小科学家和外行人之间的认知距离，我们应该尝试让公众参与对话，而不是专注于内容知识的传播。这是跨学科研究的关键支柱之一：同等重视科学知识和经验知识。如果我们认识到社会科学问题中的社会，公民就会突然变成专家。这创造了支持、信任和平等，并突出了研究人员自己不会想到的研究主题的重要方面。

那么问题仍然是公众参与围绕社会科学问题的对话对微生物学研究意味着什么。在本期中，Bradshaw 提供了 Lorimer等人的示例。（2019 年）的参与式基因组学，展示了微生物学家如何与公民参与者合作，通过协作研究设计、实验和结果解释——微生物学家的知识和经验知识。在这个例子中，公民是咨询者，他们只参与了研究过程的一小部分，即数据收集过程。布拉德肖的另一个例子（政治蓝藻；Waterton 和 Tsouvalis，  2015 年）使跨学科更进了一步：在一个被藻类污染的湖泊的地方问题中，微生物学家、社会科学家、公民、农民和其他利益相关者参与了多个研究步骤和随后的决策。向更广泛的利益相关者开放这个问题，揭示了藻类污染的潜在起源不会发生单学科研究人员（实质性推理），同时在每个相关人员内部和之间建立支持和信任。

这些是与微生物学家进行跨学科研究的主要例子，但跨学科研究也有超越实验室研究和解决当地问题的应用。科学知识和经验知识也可用于共同确定科学和社会的期望未来。然后，公民必须从一开始就参与到这个过程中，因为“如果我们想要稳健地开发应用程序并符合公共利益，那么在开发的早期阶段组织评估和参与的反思性策略非常重要。” （Betten等人，  2018 年，第 21 页）。例如，在 Betten等人最近的一个联合项目中。( 2018) 和 Stemerding等人。（2019 年），合成生物学研究人员和社会利益相关者齐聚一堂，共同创造有关抗生素耐药性和可再生能源的未来情景。其目的是为这两个领域的未来创新创建一个跨学科指南，同时考虑到技术选择和社会目标。他们将构建未来情景作为负责任研究和创新工具的概念由两条轨迹组成。研究人员采用以技术选择为导向的方法来探索可能涉及抗生素耐药性和可再生能源未来的创新的合理性和可行性。另一方面，社会利益相关者遵循以社会目标为导向的方法，并通过探索社会挑战的需求、价值和目的以及合成生物学在本文中的潜在作用来研究这些未来情景的性质。最后，双方被要求在研讨会上分享他们的发现——“社会目标与技术之间建立联系的对话”（Stemerding等人，  2019 年，第 219 页）——并就这些可能的未来达成了相互理解.

以跨学科方式构建未来情景的方法不仅限于研究，而且已经在公共卫生领域得到应用，例如与 WHO 开始的 One Health 方法。我认为这种方法适用于 Timmis等人描述的所有与微生物学相关的危机。( 2019)：抗生素耐药性危机；几乎根除的儿童疾病回归；过敏症的增加；温室气体危机；土壤危机；以及环境和食物网中的污染物积累。不仅识字对于合作解决这些危机很重要，而且社会的经验也很重要，以类似的方式，这些问题不仅是科学微生物问题，而且是社会科学问题。因此，所有相关人员（公众、科学家、政策制定者）​​都有责任应用跨学科方法以及解决威胁我们生存的危机。