‘Across Boundaries in Sciences’: Watch the Symposium’s Recordings

The boundaries of science have been increasingly pushed and pulled during the Covid-19 pandemic, shaking our understanding of science not only within the scientific system, but in relation to politics and society in general. In this evolving scenario, ALLEA and the Council of Finnish Academies hosted an international scientific symposium online on 5 May 2021.

Featuring a wide range of international perspectives from research, politics, and civil society, speakers shared and discussed their latest insights on this complex topic. The recordings are now online and available to watch (see the playlist below, or click here).

To learn more about the scientific symposium, visit www.alleageneralassembly.org.

 

©Krister Majander

Registration for the Future of Science Communication Conference is open

Together with Wissenschaft im Dialog, we are happy to announce that registration for the Future of Science Communications Conference is now open! The event will take place online on 24 and 25 June 2021. Attendence is free of cost, open to all and registration will be open until 18 June, 2021.

The multidisciplinary conference will bring together outstanding researchers and practitioners, reflecting the state of the art in the field of science communication and discussing the further development of the field. Its primary goal is to provide an impetus for stronger networking and further transfer activities in science communication.

Funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research, the digital conference is free to attend and will offer interesting keynotes, panels, workshops and lightning talks featuring researchers and practitioners from various European and international institutions. The topics to be discussed include:

  • Trust in Science
  • Science and Politics
  • Science Communication in a Digital World
  • Crisis Communications
  • Target Groups of Science Communication

With the full programme now published, we are looking forward to keynotes from Mike Schäfer, Nicole Grobert and Cissi Askwall.

ALLEA is particularly excited to highlight three formats where our projects and partners are especially involved. The workshop Communicating microplastics risk: Balancing sensation and reflection is organized by colleagues at SAPEA and explores a real-life case of how SAPEA communicated the absence of evidence of risk from microplastics to human health after an evidence review report. The workshop Experiments to fight science disinformation online, lead by some of our PERITIA colleagues, will analyse the problem of scientific disinformation and look at strategies to contrast it based on evidence from experiments in social and behavioural sciences.

Lastly, Prof. Dr. Antonio Loprieno, ALLEA President, will be moderating a panel discussion on Science and Politics, featuring Prof. Dr. Janusz Bujnicki (International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw), Prof. Dr. Ortwin Renn (Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies Potsdam) and Dr. Bella Starling (Central Manchester University).

To view the entire programme with all keynotes, panels and other formats, visit the conference plattform: https://future-of-scicomm.converve.io/

About the conference

An increasing scientification of societal discourses, not only against the background of the corona pandemic, indicates that the communication of scientific knowledge will be even more important in the future. While the exchange of experience within practitioner communities is working better and better at the national and, increasingly, at the European level, the academic discipline of ‘science of science communication’ is only slowly emerging in the European research landscape. Hence, there is a lack of systematic, interdisciplinary overviews of research questions and areas. In addition, the transfer between research and practice in this field is still at a relatively low level. This lack of systematic transfer and networking leads to a lack of practical orientation in research as well as a lack of evidence orientation in the practice of science communication.

This is where the Future of Science Communication conference sets in: Its primary goal is to provide an impetus for stronger networking and further transfer activities in Science Communication. Only effective and evidence-based science communication can help to tackle the challenges in the relationship between science-public-media-politics in the coming years on the European level. We need science communication research that is well connected at the European level, systematically conducts excellent research, and promotes its transfer into practice.

Moving Research and Practice Forward

Which topics in science communication are considered to be well researched? What are the recommended courses for action in science communication practice and science policy? And how can the exchange and transfer between research and practice be better and more sustainably designed? Participants will address these overarching questions in high level panel sessions as well as in in-depth workshops, while discussing the latest findings on questions of trust in science, dealing with fake news, crisis communication, citizen science, and more. Furthermore, our speakers will use case studies on specific controversial scientific topics such as artificial intelligence, genome editing, climate change, or vaccinations to illustrate and discuss learnings from research and practice of science communication.

Over the next weeks, we will be highlighting and showcasing some of our speakers, panellists and workshops on our social media so be sure to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

For a sneak peek at the programme and to register for the event, head to our website!

 

European Academies Re-Elect Antonio Loprieno as ALLEA President

ALLEA Member Academies unanimously re-elected Professor Antonio Loprieno as President for the term 2021–2023. Board Members Professor Annette Grüters-Kieslich and Professor Luke Drury were appointed as ALLEA Vice-Presidents.

The elections’ results were announced today during the annual meeting of ALLEA, the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities. As a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the voting took place by correspondence ahead of the virtual meeting.

“I am very grateful for the trust and support from our Member Academies. It is an honour for me to serve ALLEA during these critical times, and I am looking forward to an increasingly productive dialogue between science and society, in order to carry ALLEA’s European vision and mission across borders, disciplines and societal actors”, President Loprieno said.

As representative of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, Loprieno assumed the ALLEA Presidency in May 2018 for a first three-year term. The ALLEA President serves a maximum of two consecutive terms and chairs the ALLEA Board with responsibility for strategic priorities, the overall policy direction, budgetary issues and other governance topics of the European Academies’ federation.

Following the General Assembly, the ALLEA Board convened and appointed its members Annette Grüters-Kieslich (Leopoldina / Union of German Academies) and Luke Drury (Royal Irish Academy) as ALLEA Vice-Presidents for the President’s term 2021–2023.

ALLEA’s 2021 General Assembly also featured the virtual scientific symposium ‘Across Boundaries in Sciences’, co-organised with the Council of Finnish Academies on 5 May. The event gathered leading academics, policymakers, and civil society from over 40 countries to discuss today’s position of science in society and in relation to policy, including a particular focus on interdisciplinary research and a debate on the recently released ALLEA discussion paper ‘Fact or Fake? Tackling Science Disinformation’.

Helen Keller, Laureate of the 2021 ALLEA Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values

On the occasion of ALLEA’s General Assembly, law scholar Helen Keller was announced laureate of the 2021 All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values. The Jury recognised Keller’s important contribution to the development and consolidation of human rights jurisprudence in Europe as well as her commitment to fundamental rights.

Helen Keller is Chair for Public Law, European and Public International Law at the University of Zurich. She is a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee and served as Judge at the European Court of Human Rights in the period of 2011-2020. In December 2020, she was appointed Judge to the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The ALLEA Prize recognises researchers or intellectuals whose work represents a significant impact on the advancement of Europe. Professor Keller will deliver a Prize Lecture during a dedicated online event in the second half of 2021.

Scientific Symposium Discusses Collaboration ‘Across Boundaries in Sciences’

ALLEA and the Council of Finnish Academies hosted an international scientific symposium online on 5 May 2021. The event gathered leading academics, policymakers, and civil society to rethink the role of science in society in response to complex problems and urgent threats like science disinformation.

A diverse programme of keynotes, plenary discussions and breakout sessions invited the participants to explore the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary research and the boundaries of science across regions, disciplines and generations. The conference closed with a dedicated presentation and discussion of ALLEA’s newly published report ‘Fact or Fake? Tackling Science Disinformation’.

Interdisciplinarity was the focus of the first part of the symposium which started with the keynote ‘Fostering convergence across disciplines’, by Academician of Science and Professor Riitta Hari (Aalto University).

As a physician herself working on neuroscience and arts, she reflected on her lessons learned to achieve convergence. Among her suggestions to move towards interdisciplinary, she underlined the need for deep knowledge foundations, the importance of learning how to work in a team (not in a group) and how to communicate with other disciplines.

Other speakers also recognised the great uncertainty that interdisciplinary research entails. “A discipline is like a security blanket for academics. Interdisciplinarity is inventing your own security blanket”, said Professor Joyce Tait (Co-Director at Innogen Institute, Royal Society of Edinburgh).

Moving into interdisciplinary research is not an easy choice for early-career researchers, argued Dr. Mona Mannevuo (Postdoctoral researcher, Young Academy Finland), who nevertheless encouraged her fellows to think of interdisciplinarity as a strategy: “not for instrumental purposes but for restructuring the order of knowledge.”

Science, Politics and Disinformation

In the second part, ALLEA President Antonio Loprieno shared the stage with Adrienn Király, Head of Cabinet of European Commissioner Mariya Gabriel, and Permanent Secretary Anita Lehikoinen, the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland. He presented his view on the future of academies when rethinking the boundaries between politics and science.

According to him, in times of crisis like the ongoing pandemic, academies may prove more flexible in providing science advice thanks to their experience and know-how on increased interdisciplinary interaction and flexibility.

The symposium closed with a final panel dedicated to discuss the recently published report ‘Fact or Fake? Tackling Science Disinformation’. Its lead author, Professor Dan Larhammar (President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), provided an overview on the main findings with an optimistic message, despite the dangers of this phenomenon.

Research provides a great deal of hope to fight disinformation. There is evidence that people can be made aware of disinformation. They can be inoculated against it”, he stated after presenting examples of strategies to counter science disinformation.

The symposium was recorded and is already available to watch here.

©Krister Majander

Biodegradable Plastics: How Do We Engage With Consumers and Society?

This webinar draws on a recent SAPEA report and the related Scientific Opinion by the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors.

European Coordination Needed to Fight Science Disinformation, Academies Say

In a new report, ALLEA examines the potential of technical and policy measures to tackle science disinformation and calls for improved European exchange and coordination in this field.

While disinformation strategies are intoxicating public discourses in many fields, science disinformation is particularly dangerous to democratic governance and society at large. As highlighted by the ongoing pandemic, an undermining of trust in science poses a fundamental threat to political and individual decisions based on evidence and scientific knowledge.

Over the past years, extensive research and a variety of strategies have been developed and applied to tackle science disinformation. ALLEA’s paper reviews this work, focusing on the roots and consequences of this multi-dimensional phenomenon, as well as practical solutions for policy, technology and communication.

“The science race against Covid-19 has not only been in the search for a vaccine. Another major risk has mobilised researchers: science disinformation. This report identifies key pathways to counter this ‘infodemic’ in future global crises. Seeing these problems unfolding in our societies, we need an institutionalised and coordinated strategy to galvanise researchers, communicators, and policymakers into action as early as possible”, says ALLEA President Antonio Loprieno.

The authors discuss the most prominent psychological, technical and political strategies to counter science disinformation, including inoculation, debunking, recommender systems, fact-checking, raising awareness, media literacy, as well as innovations in science communication and public engagement.

Following an analysis of the consequences of science disinformation in climate change, vaccine hesitancy and pandemics, the report concludes with a series of recommendations. The authors call for:

  • a stronger focus on communicating how science works and more dialogue in science communication practices,
  • a serious engagement with the public when exercising or communicating research,
  • valuing the virtue of intellectual humility when communicating scientific evidence,
  • the maintenance of good research practices and high ethical standards to ensure integrity and trustworthiness,
  • accountable, honest, transparent, tailored and effective science advice mechanisms.

To implement these proposals, the authors advise to establish a European Centre/Network for Science Communication and a European Code of Conduct for Science Communication.

Even though there seems to be widespread awareness of the problems and harm caused by   disinformation, there is still no coordinated European effort to respond to this with increased and better science communication. While mechanisms of science advice for policy have been introduced on different levels to bridge the gap between scientists and policymakers, no central pan-European mechanism or institution is in place to coordinate existing initiatives and develop coherent guidelines and recommendations on science communication in an inclusive manner”, the authors argue.

The discussion paper will be presented and debated at the upcoming scientific symposium ‘Across Boundaries in Sciences’, held online on 5 May, during the 2021 ALLEA General Assembly. Registration is still open at: https://alleageneralassembly.org/

Download the report here and learn more about ALLEA’s Fact or Fake Project.