Scientific Misinformation During a Crisis 

Date: Tuesday, April 9th, 2025 Location: Online Only

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During an emergency, social media is flooded with misinformation, often spreading false rumors and undermining the work of government officials and disaster response workers. In efforts to fight back against false information and save lives, scientists play an important role given they are highly trusted within society. Scientists, in fact, rank higher in trust levels worldwide compared to government leaders, journalists, and CEOs. Join the International Science Reserve for a discussion with leading experts in the fields of misinformation, technology, and communication to discuss the important role scientists play in communication clarity and facts during a crisis. We will learn about examples of success stories in combatting misinformation online during a crisis.

Speakers:

• Dr. Lisa Fazio is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on how children and adults learn true and false information from the world around them, and on how to correct errors in people’s knowledge. She received the Early Career Impact Award from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences in 2020 and the Frank Research Prize in Public Interest Communications in 2017. She is also a member of the National Academies’ committee on Science Misinformation. Her research is currently supported by major grants from both NSF and the Mercury Project focusing on why people believe false information and testing the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing the spread of and belief in misinformation. 

• Dr. Yotam Ophir co-authored the book, “Democracy amid Crises: Polarization, Pandemic, Protests, & Persuasion” was published in 2022 by Oxford University Press. His sole-authored book “Misinformation & Society” is expected to be published in 2025. Dr. Ophir is the head of the Media Effects, Misinformation, and Extremism (MEME) lab, is a member of University at Buffalo’s Center for Information Integrity, and is a distinguished fellow at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2023, he received the “Exceptional Scholar: Young Investigator Award” from UB.  

• Dr. Leysia Palen is a 2022 Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. She was the founding chair of the Department of Information Science launched in 2015.  She helped found the field of research called “crisis informatics” which is a multidisciplinary field of science that combines social science with information science to understand how people respond to disaster. She brings her training in human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-supported cooperative work and social computing to bear on understanding and advancing socio-technical issues of societal import.  

Moderator:

• Doug Parsons, Director of America Adapts and host of its podcast on climate change adaptation where he talks with scientists, activists, policymakers and journalists about the choices we face and the people who make them.