Speaker
Carl T. Bergstrom, PhD
Professor, Department of Biology
University of Washington
Keywords
Research, Misinformation, Media, Social Media
Key Points
- Misinformation abounds in medicine and about medicine. As researchers, we are producers and consumers of the medical literature.
- It is important to know and understand the information landscape into which your research is going out. What are the debates and controversies in the press and social media? If you’re working on a paper about vaccine safety, you have to understand the conversation about vaccine safety. How will it be framed in the public discourse? This will help you release information responsibly.
- It is important to avoid hype. Be very explicit about what findings do and do not provide.
- Issue responsible press releases. Researchers should consider themselves personally responsible for press releases. Researchers need to understand how preprints are received. It is important to understand that there are different standards depending on the topic. If you’re not prepared to see your manuscript appear in a leading medical journal, you should think carefully before posting it as a preprint.
- As a research community, we need to think about auditing citations because they are used as evidence for claims we make but many are falling short of that aim. One step journals can take is checking to see if cited papers have been retracted. More broadly, citations in medical journals often do not reflect the material cited. 10-20% of the time the claim is not a fair representation of what is being cited. We need to find a way to tackle this.
- Design stand-alone data visualizations because one thing that happens in a social media world is that the graphs and visualizations very quickly escape their containers. A paper is posted, it has a data figure, model or schematic, and it gets excerpted in the media or on individual’s social media feeds and the context is left behind. All of the necessary context should be included in the figure itself so people cannot accidentally snip it away from the relevant context.
- When we are communicating about our science, it is important to engage with traditional media and take the time to get to know reporters who are interested in the science. Engaging with social media is important, particularly as false information starts to spread, it can make its way into traditional media. One of the best ways to stop false information on social media is having the author step in and clarify or correct misinformation. This is a very powerful and effective thing to do.
- We all have to prepare for generative AI. The landscape is changing so fast compared to other technologies. We already have the devices and platforms where generative AI is displayed. AI generated work has been submitted to journals and other publications. Publishers will need to rethink how to identify who is saying things and what are their credentials to make sure the ideas in the scientific literature are coming from humans who are trustworthy.
Learn more
Read Misinformation in and about science.
Discussion Themes
-Are you an optimist for the future? I am an optimist about science. We can innovate and change our norms and institutions to tackle problems. I am very pessimistic about big tech and social media, who are motivated by clicks and ads with no oversight. The data of what is happening with social media is not available unless you are collaborating with social media.
-How can we prioritize where to focus the resources to address misinformation? One thing that is essential is working within marginalized communities to understand the effects of misinformation on and in these communities and to partner with the communities most effected by misinformation to better understand where are the biggest harms being caused.
Tags
#pctGR, @Collaboratory1