While 90% of scientists surveyed by Nature feel that there is a “reproducibility crisis” in science (Baker, 2016), and major media outlets such as The Economist have run cover stories on the topic (Anonymous, 2013), we have little knowledge how much of this has reached the public. A secondary analysis of a representative survey in Germany has now explored this (Mede et al., 2020). According to this survey (1008 participants), more than 75% of Germans are not aware of the “replication crisis”. Greater awareness was linked to having a university degree (OR 1.97 [1.03; 3.78]) and frequent contact with science (OR 1.79 [1.04; 3.08]), weakly related to age (OR 1.03 [1.01; 1.05]), but not associated with gender, household income, or religiosity. Generally, few participants thought that non-replicability shows that you cannot trust science; rather, a large majority agrees that replication shows that quality assurance takes place in science and research and that errors and their corrections are part of science. 

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