U.S. National Academies Launch Content Series to Dispel Health and Science Misinformation
As misinformation in health and science information continues to flourish on social media and in the real world, more organisations are stepping up their work to improve communication about science information and outreach to new audiences. In this regard, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) are playing a crucial role in producing reliable science information to new audiences to curb the spread of misinformation and disinformation online.
False science information exists on the web in all its types: misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation occurs when authors link partial facts to wrong conclusions. Typically, misinformation is popular in vaccine-hesitant media linking the low rate or absence of autism to communities who shun vaccines. Authors here conflate correlation with causation. Disinformation, however, is the intentional spread of false information to unsuspecting audiences seeking “good” information to make health decisions.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions which provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. Through a collaboration with Google, which started in 2018, NASEM piloted a new science content strategy to fight misinformation and reach new audiences.
Following its recent 2017 report, Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda, NASEM recognises that the new frontier in effective science communication is adopting a public engagement plan which will inform its members on how ordinary audiences use science information to form their own knowledge and practices, and a focus on underserved audiences.
NASEM’s new plan comes from an understanding that while its traditional role remains to advise the federal government on difficult science problems, lawmakers and federal bureaucrats are not often the prime audience for health topics that concerns individuals, and where misinformation is often rife. However, through its new programs addressed to the public and younger audiences, and a grant-funded collaboration with Google, NASEM is transforming its content and communication strategy to the taste and needs of new audiences and the fight against misinformation.
Ahmed Medien, Tunisia project manager at Meedan, spoke to Kara Laney, Senior Programme Officer at NASEM in written email correspondence about NAS’ role in science education and fighting misinformation online.
AM: How does the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and/or the committee working on health misinformation imagine the problem to be? What is/are the missing data points from NASEM’s perspective to determining what the problem is?
KL: As an organization congressionally mandated to provide advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine see misinformation as a threat to sound decision-making and an informed citizenry. It is particularly distressing to see misinformation mislead people about health issues because of the consequences it may have on the health of the individual, the adverse effects that may occur within communities, and the impacts such false narratives may have on policy decisions at the local, state, national, and even international levels.
With so much information available to everyone all the time, we need to know how to get good information in front of people, making it easy for them to find and easy for them to know it is based on the best available evidence. To accomplish this, we need to be able to answer questions as wide-ranging as: What are the visual and contextual cues that people use to determine the legitimacy of a source? What metrics would tell us if the information has been effectively communicated? What is the best way to communicate the evolving nature of science — that findings change as we learn more?
AM: How do you define NASEM stakeholder role in unpuzzling this problem?
Part of the mission of the NASEM is to help ensure that public discourse is informed by the best available evidence. Therefore, it is incumbent on us to be part of the solution to the confusion in public discourse caused by misinformation related to science, engineering, and health topics.
One way we can address this problem is by mobilizing members of our community of more than 6,000 volunteer experts to contribute their time and knowledge to respond to discrete topics rife with misinformation, such as vaccines and climate change. Another way is to use our role as a convener of experts to bring together parties working on combating misinformation from different disciplines, institutions, and sectors to develop a common understanding of the challenges science, engineering, and medicine face in combating misinformation and devise actions to help this larger community address the problem. And finally, we can foster and strengthen connections between research and practice in science communication and between science and diverse and new publics. We established a standing committee of experts in 2018 to do just that, building on the findings of the 2017 report.
AM: Can you briefly explain the NASEM’s Based On Science activity to push out science content?
KL: Based On Science is a nascent activity by the NASEM to address science and health topics that frequently have a great deal of online misinformation associated with them. As short, online-only articles aimed at a general audience, it is a different type of communication product than the NASEM has tried before. In the first year, we started with a small number of topics in the area of health. In the second year, we are building on what we have learned to increase the amount of content we produce and broaden the scope of that content to include our science and engineering portfolios as well. We are sharing this content through our social media channels and working to make it easy to find online.
AM: How about NASEM’s “the science behind it” project and its effort to reach out to new audiences (millennials). How successful this initiative is at the moment?
As mentioned, Based On Science is relatively new, but we hope as an online-only product that we can reach younger audiences that get most of their information from mobile devices. Another recently launched activity is The Science Behind It, a new communication project to explain what science concludes about important issues that interest people and how those conclusions were derived. The Science Behind It highlights the ways science, engineering, and medicine touch our lives every day. It just launched in mid-September, so it’s too early to know its reach yet, but stay tuned for more content there and at Based On Science in the coming months!
The pilot phase of Based On Science started in June 2018 and continued until February 2019. NASEM tackled commonly searched topics with the most “uncertain” results such as vaccine hesitancy, health issues with regards to fluoride, weight loss supplements, concern about Vitamin D among other topics. During the rest of 2019 and 2020, NASEM aim to produce short reads (~600 words), at a 9th-grade reading level, designed for shareability online and link directly to NASEM’ own reports materials and other facts from institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control.
While the NASEM is targeting misinformation at its source with its own content, the community understands that factual science information is only one part of the puzzle that forms the decision-making process of individuals. Other intervening elements such as political ideology, religion, income contribute to individual health decisions, and all can affect public trust in sources of information about science and of science itself. Research is needed to understand the factors that influence people’s trust in science and scientific information. As part of this research, it will be important to clarify the dimensions of trust and credibility and how they relate to one another.
As misinformation in health and science information continues to flourish on social media and in the real world, more organisations are stepping up their work to improve communication about science information and outreach to new audiences. In this regard, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) are playing a crucial role in producing reliable science information to new audiences to curb the spread of misinformation and disinformation online.
False science information exists on the web in all its types: misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation occurs when authors link partial facts to wrong conclusions. Typically, misinformation is popular in vaccine-hesitant media linking the low rate or absence of autism to communities who shun vaccines. Authors here conflate correlation with causation. Disinformation, however, is the intentional spread of false information to unsuspecting audiences seeking “good” information to make health decisions.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions which provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. Through a collaboration with Google, which started in 2018, NASEM piloted a new science content strategy to fight misinformation and reach new audiences.
Following its recent 2017 report, Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda, NASEM recognises that the new frontier in effective science communication is adopting a public engagement plan which will inform its members on how ordinary audiences use science information to form their own knowledge and practices, and a focus on underserved audiences.
NASEM’s new plan comes from an understanding that while its traditional role remains to advise the federal government on difficult science problems, lawmakers and federal bureaucrats are not often the prime audience for health topics that concerns individuals, and where misinformation is often rife. However, through its new programs addressed to the public and younger audiences, and a grant-funded collaboration with Google, NASEM is transforming its content and communication strategy to the taste and needs of new audiences and the fight against misinformation.
Ahmed Medien, Tunisia project manager at Meedan, spoke to Kara Laney, Senior Programme Officer at NASEM in written email correspondence about NAS’ role in science education and fighting misinformation online.
AM: How does the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and/or the committee working on health misinformation imagine the problem to be? What is/are the missing data points from NASEM’s perspective to determining what the problem is?
KL: As an organization congressionally mandated to provide advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine see misinformation as a threat to sound decision-making and an informed citizenry. It is particularly distressing to see misinformation mislead people about health issues because of the consequences it may have on the health of the individual, the adverse effects that may occur within communities, and the impacts such false narratives may have on policy decisions at the local, state, national, and even international levels.
With so much information available to everyone all the time, we need to know how to get good information in front of people, making it easy for them to find and easy for them to know it is based on the best available evidence. To accomplish this, we need to be able to answer questions as wide-ranging as: What are the visual and contextual cues that people use to determine the legitimacy of a source? What metrics would tell us if the information has been effectively communicated? What is the best way to communicate the evolving nature of science — that findings change as we learn more?
AM: How do you define NASEM stakeholder role in unpuzzling this problem?
Part of the mission of the NASEM is to help ensure that public discourse is informed by the best available evidence. Therefore, it is incumbent on us to be part of the solution to the confusion in public discourse caused by misinformation related to science, engineering, and health topics.
One way we can address this problem is by mobilizing members of our community of more than 6,000 volunteer experts to contribute their time and knowledge to respond to discrete topics rife with misinformation, such as vaccines and climate change. Another way is to use our role as a convener of experts to bring together parties working on combating misinformation from different disciplines, institutions, and sectors to develop a common understanding of the challenges science, engineering, and medicine face in combating misinformation and devise actions to help this larger community address the problem. And finally, we can foster and strengthen connections between research and practice in science communication and between science and diverse and new publics. We established a standing committee of experts in 2018 to do just that, building on the findings of the 2017 report.
AM: Can you briefly explain the NASEM’s Based On Science activity to push out science content?
KL: Based On Science is a nascent activity by the NASEM to address science and health topics that frequently have a great deal of online misinformation associated with them. As short, online-only articles aimed at a general audience, it is a different type of communication product than the NASEM has tried before. In the first year, we started with a small number of topics in the area of health. In the second year, we are building on what we have learned to increase the amount of content we produce and broaden the scope of that content to include our science and engineering portfolios as well. We are sharing this content through our social media channels and working to make it easy to find online.
AM: How about NASEM’s “the science behind it” project and its effort to reach out to new audiences (millennials). How successful this initiative is at the moment?
As mentioned, Based On Science is relatively new, but we hope as an online-only product that we can reach younger audiences that get most of their information from mobile devices. Another recently launched activity is The Science Behind It, a new communication project to explain what science concludes about important issues that interest people and how those conclusions were derived. The Science Behind It highlights the ways science, engineering, and medicine touch our lives every day. It just launched in mid-September, so it’s too early to know its reach yet, but stay tuned for more content there and at Based On Science in the coming months!
The pilot phase of Based On Science started in June 2018 and continued until February 2019. NASEM tackled commonly searched topics with the most “uncertain” results such as vaccine hesitancy, health issues with regards to fluoride, weight loss supplements, concern about Vitamin D among other topics. During the rest of 2019 and 2020, NASEM aim to produce short reads (~600 words), at a 9th-grade reading level, designed for shareability online and link directly to NASEM’ own reports materials and other facts from institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control.
While the NASEM is targeting misinformation at its source with its own content, the community understands that factual science information is only one part of the puzzle that forms the decision-making process of individuals. Other intervening elements such as political ideology, religion, income contribute to individual health decisions, and all can affect public trust in sources of information about science and of science itself. Research is needed to understand the factors that influence people’s trust in science and scientific information. As part of this research, it will be important to clarify the dimensions of trust and credibility and how they relate to one another.
