n many domains-from the safety of vaccination to the reality of anthropogenic climate change-there is a gap between the scientific consensus and public opinion 1 . The persistence of this gap in spite of numerous information campaigns shows how hard it is to bridge. It has even been suggested that information campaigns backfire, either by addressing audiences with strong pre-existing views 2,3 or by attempting to present too many arguments 4,5 .Fortunately, it appears that, in most cases, good arguments do change people's mind in the expected direction 6,7 . Still, the effects of short arguments aimed at large and diverse audiences, even if they are positive, are typically small [8][9][10] . By contrast, when people can exchange arguments face to face, more ample changes of mind regularly occur. Compare, for example, how people react to simple logical arguments. On the one hand, when participants are provided with a good argument for the correct answer to a logical problem, a substantial minority fails to change their mind 11,12 . On the other hand, when participants tackle the same problems in groups, nearly everyone discussing with a participant defending the correct answer changes their mind [11][12][13] . More generally, argumentation has been shown, in a variety of domains, to allow people to change their minds and adopt the best answers available in the group [13][14][15][16][17] . Even on contested issues, discussions with politicians 18 , canvassers 19 or scientists 20,21 can lead to changes of mind that are significant, durable 19 and larger than those observed with standard messages 18,21 .Mercier and Sperber 17 have suggested that the power of interactive argumentation, in contrast to the presentation of a simple argument, to change minds stems largely from the opportunity that discussion affords to address the discussants' counterarguments. In the course of a conversation, people can raise counterarguments as they wish, the counterarguments can be rebutted, the rebuttals contested and so forth 22 . When people are presented with challenging arguments in a one-sided manner, as in typical messaging campaigns, they also generate counterarguments. [23][24][25] However, these counterarguments remain unaddressed. Arguably, the production of counterarguments that remain unaddressed is not only why standard information campaigns are not very effective but also why they sometimes backfire 26 .
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