68 Comments

Katelyn for President. You have my vote. I know, who’d want the job. But this is so well thought out and written. I’m glad to see you screaming from the mountain tops.

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I am a scientist, have written a book on scientific communication, and teach workshops on this for scientists, WHEN I CAN GET THEM TO SHOW UP! Since the workshops are free, and because it is not part of their required work, it is typical to have only 20% of the students who sign up for a workshop actually show up. This is true for both in-person, and virtual workshops. The people who stay through the workshop learn a lot, and change the way they communicate (I have before/after data that shows this). But getting students and young faculty to take scientific communication seriously is an uphill battle. I love that scientists like Katelyn Jetelina are pointing out the problems and suggesting solutions. It would be even better if scientists would get their students and colleagues (and their colleague's students) to change the way they communicate. Do their papers and posters have clear, explanatory titles that summarize the main point of the work? Do their abstracts follow a structure that is easy for scientists outside their field to understand: Background, Problem, Methods/Results, Significance. This is not rocket science. I think we make scicomm much too difficult to learn. We, scicomm trainers, need to remove our own jargon and communicate much better about how students can communicate well to scientists outside their field. Once students can do this, it will be a small step to communicating well with the public. - https://presentingscienceconcisely.com/book

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founding

Herculean—Sisyphusian—task. I back you but there is simply too much money to be made on and with lies and delusion.

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May 31, 2023·edited May 31, 2023

Restrain your sources of information to trusted and reliable sources. I give you mines: I have web subscriptions for the NYT, WashPost, Guardian, Financial Times and Le Monde (I'm French). I also read news sites like The Conversation, Bellingcat, the Intercept, and I watch BBC World News. I have no Twitter account, no Facebook, no Instagram, no TikTok. I'm a news addict, but I'm not prepared to gobble up everything.

And — of course: I read this blog!

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Thanks for continuing to clearly communicate "real" information. Teaching how to recognize mis and disinformation needs to be built into the K-12 curriculum. Unfortunately lies can be much more entertaining than the truth and combating that is going to be very hard indeed.

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This is all true and it's unfortunately part of living in a post-modern age which now has bonus social media echo chambers and people who have adopted politics as their new religion. Every day we see both from without and from within pressures that have nothing to do with real truth-seeking, but rather with political correctness (from all sides, the right and left both have their sacred cows). We saw this with Covid, where bad information came from external state actors, misinformed neighbors, uninformed government agencies, entrenched interests and so on, but it extends to almost every area now. We need a new "enlightenment" with a focus on truth at all levels and a willingness to question one's own dogmas, otherwise we will continue to fall back into the state of dis/mis-information that prevailed for most of human history.

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I’ve written about some additional ideas for fighting disinformation, including AI-enhanced disinformation, at https://www.winwindemocracy.org/i/120958506/defending-against-disinformation.

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What is Truth? Who defines "misinformation"?

The government through its 3 letter agencies - FBI, CDC, FDA? LDP (Local Dog Pound)? Should we have worn masks, or not, or multiple masks, when could we stop wearing them in New York or Florida?

Congress talks about changing "Section 230 which of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from being held liable for what their users post in most cases." (https://www.npr.org/series/973275370/untangling-disinformation). Yet, nothing appears to be changing. Members of Congress to a large degree cannot be held accountable for blatantly lying in Congress (look up Harry Reid).

Ah, one might say "Well that's the government, what can you expect!" But, look at all the false information being presented as truth in academic centers and science.

It's not until integrity and honor become the bywords for most of society will this change. But I will not hold my breath waiting for this to happen. (I follow YLE because the facts laid out can be verified to a large degree through third-party links if not through source documentation links.)

What I believe must be presented by the media (of all types) is how to critically examine and adjudicate information on truthfulness and fact. This should be required training at all educational levels. And in terms that the average person can understand.

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founding

I commend you enormously! Thank you for not giving up on the huge problems we face. I can hardly fathom that you have two young children, yet you balance mothering with your passion for sharing real truth to the rest of us. …a million thank yous!

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How about convening the “Asilomar Conference on AI” (like the NAS-led Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA in 1975, which set international standards for such research). For the AI conference, invite not only the leading thinkers in tech/AI, but public health, homeland security, psychology, and ethics experts to set 21st century standards for online truth verification and AI controls.

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As was mentioned, trustworthiness is a real problem. It is also made worse by the echo chamber effect and personal biases. Take for example the coming RSV vaccine and the concerns about misinformation. The immediate question becomes who determines what is and what is not "misinformation". After the experience with the Covid vaccine, I would not be in a hurry to trust a rushed RSV vaccine either and no amount of telling me that it's safe is going to change my mind. Yeah right, I learned last time about being injected with some magic potion. I realize the "left" likes to believe that the Covid vax is / was "safe and effective" and I, as well as countless others disagree and there is plenty of evidence, (or is it "misinformation"?) to back that up. Likewise, I don't trust the CDC in large part because it has an obvious political bias. Similarly, I think the pharmaceutical companies lied about the safety and efficacy of the covid vax as demonstrated, among other things, by the moving goal posts on the definition of "vaccine" in regard to preventing infection and they've got a real incentive in this thing called profit. And YES, the definition was CHANGED. This sort of thing creates SERIOUS credibility gaps. Making things worse is / was the massive attempt to shut down discussion that did not conform to the political agenda of the "left" regarding the vaccine and alternative treatments for Covid. Paging Dr. Robert Malone. I will add that we're not just talking about 'horse paste' but when we have highly credentialed people being shouted down, shut down, and censored for questioning the "official" narrative, well as the famous line says, "Houston, We have a problem!" And then there is the whole attempt to cover the origins up. So here we are, we recognize that we have a problem and undoubtedly AI and other technology is going to make it much worse with things like the so called "deep fakes" which will make it difficult or even impossible to determine what is real or fake. What I do know, is that censorship under the guise of "preventing mis or disinformation" is NOT the answer. We do NOT need or want a Ministry of Truth. When our supposed experts and institutions can't be trusted anymore, where do we go?

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A lot of the summit was recorded -- not sure if I should post the link here in comments, but your readers can search for Nobel Prize Summit 2023 to find a lot of the recordings!

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Thanks, I guess. Sadly, I already knew that this was part of the dilemma we are facing. Hustlers, snake-oil salesmen, and their right wing enablers are all engaged in a well funded project to destroy confidence in all public institutions. Historically, this is an important first step in the march towards authoritarianism. "You can't trust all those so-called experts," proclaims Big Brother. "Only I will tell you the truth."

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Could you name some of the folks doing the good work?

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I want to thank you for bringing this to the forefront! I live in a university town, but hearing supposedly educated folk spread disinformation about COVID was very discouraging. You must feel like the person in the middle of the crowd trying to be heard. I am especially concerned given the AI explosion...where you have an attorney submitting an AI generated brief to the courts full of made up "facts." I think this is going to take a concerted effort to combat this scourge and we're already behind! This will take a joint effort between government, journalism and private industry...and I am very pessimistic that these 3 groups can get their act together individually, nevermind as a combined force for truth.

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Your article is soooooo important...but a really big problem is mentally ill white rePUGliCONs who run the corporations that affectively run the lives of middle to low income ppl. Until ppl wake up about the lies rePUGliCONs spout daily, America will become a third world nation! White woman need to think critically think about the future of their lives, their children's lives as well as their grandchildren!!!

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