PERITIA Conference ‘Trust in Expertise in a Changing Media Landscape’

The EU-funded research project PERITIA is organising the virtual scientific conference ‘Trust in Expertise in a Changing Media Landscape’, to be held on 18-19 March. The registration and programme are available on the event website. 

The event will bring together researchers from all over the world, discussing how best to assess, establish and maintain the credibility and trustworthiness of expertise in a rapidly changing media environment. 

Scholars will present their latest findings on distrust and disinformation, populist responses to expertise, and the role of journalism and platform algorithmic design in formations of public trust in science. 

The highlights of the multidisciplinary conference include keynotes by Onora O’Neill (University of Cambridge), Christoph Neuberger (University Free, Berlin), Natali Helberger (Amsterdam), and Michael Latzer (Zurich). 

A welcome keynote will be delivered by the organisers José van Dijck and Donya Alinejad (Utrecht University), which will be followed by two days with more than 40 speakers and a dozen of panel discussions. Among the topics covered by the programme are the pandemic, climate change, conspiracy theories, algorithms and social media platforms.

The conference will close with a roundtable discussion featuring Stefan Larsson (Lund University), Jo Pierson (Free University Brussels), Judith Simon (University of Hamburg), and José van Dijck (Moderator, University of Utrecht).

Registered participants will be invited to join the Digital Café, a networking platform run by wonder.me to informally meet participants and speakers during the coffee breaks and after the event. 

ALLEA is part of PERITIA as one of the project partners working on coordination, communications and dissemination. The research project, funded by the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme was launched as a continuation of the research work developed under ALLEA’s working group Truth, Trust and Expertise.

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Call for Membership – European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies

The European Commission has opened the public Call for Membership of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies, the independent advisory body established by the President of the Commission.  It is tasked with addressing all aspects of Commission policies and legislation where ethical, societal and fundamental rights dimensions intersect with the development of science and new technologies.

Since its inception in 1991, the EGE has provided the Commission with high quality and independent advice on manifold ethical issues. In the last three years, advice was provided on topics such as artificial intelligence (2018), the future of work (2018), COVID-19 and health crises (2020) and genome editing (forthcoming).

In addition to professional expertise, members should have a high motivation to serve the mandate of the EGE, be able and willing to provide wisdom, foresight and vision, to take the time to engage in in-depth collective ethical discussion in regular meetings in Brussels and online, to devise and draft analyses and recommendations, to build working relationships of trust and collaboration and to serve independently of other interests. They should offer a broad understanding of current and emerging ethical developments, including an understanding of the role and future of ethics in the EU context, combined with the capacity to engage with inter-, trans- and multi-disciplinary perspectives when addressing contemporary ethical dilemmas.

Interested individuals are invited to submit their application by 22 March 2021 (12:00 noon CET).

Read the full call

Lise Meitner: “A Physicist Who Never Lost Her Humanity”

The editorial De Gruyter has published an excerpt from the ALLEA book “Women in European Academies: From Patronae Scientiarum to Path-Breakers”. The article is part of the chapter on Lise Meitner, written by Doris A. Corradini, Katja Geiger and Brigitte Mazohl and dedicated to the scientist, the first female member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW). The full article, including full references, can be found here. We reproduce parts of the contents, which can be read on their blog DG Conversations.

Against all odds, Austrian-born Lise Meitner devoted her life to a career in nuclear physics. On the occasion of the UN International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we look back on the achievements of a brilliant woman who many believe was once robbed of the Nobel Prize.

“It brings me great pleasure that with the election of your person in particular, esteemed Professor, the first woman has been elected to the ranks of the Academy’s membership since its founding.” The president of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), Heinrich Ficker, wrote these words of congratulation in a letter dated 9 June 1948 to Lise Meitner, a physicist already famous beyond Austria’s borders, on her election to Corresponding Member Abroad for the Division of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences.

Lise Meitner was indeed the first female member of the Academy, which had been founded in 1847. As a woman and a Jew she was elected into an academy whose membership only three years prior had consisted of many members of the National Socialist party (NSDAP) (approximately 50%) and which had not significantly changed its composition since the NSDAP had been outlawed in 1945. In 1949, the same honour of being elected the first female member was conferred on her at the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin. A few years previously she had been elected to the Academies in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Copenhagen and Oslo. In 1955, she was named an External Member of the Royal Society, an honour that meant a great deal to her, and in 1960 this was followed by her election to membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The grounds for Meitner’s election to the ÖAW were her fundamental research in the field of nuclear physics and her contribution to the study of nuclear fission. While in exile in Sweden over the New Year 1938/39, she had succeeded in explaining the physics behind the puzzling results of an experiment performed by her former Berlin colleagues Otto Hahn and Fritz Straßmann. When uranium was irradiated with neutrons, the radiochemical analysis revealed traces of the element barium. This indicated that the uranium atom had ‘split’ into lighter fragments, a result which the two chemists were unable to explain. Lise Meitner, together with her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, interpreted the reaction as nuclear fission and calculated the huge quantity of energy released in the process. Nevertheless, in 1946 Otto Hahn was the sole recipient of the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei”.

That Lise Meitner’s involvement in this epoch-making scientific breakthrough was crucial, and yet recognition for it went instead to Hahn, can be considered a prime example of the lack of acknowledgement and visibility granted to women in science. It is particularly striking because Lise Meitner was nominated for the Nobel Prize a total of 48 times by colleagues – without success. That she went empty-handed in 1946 has been cited by the science historian Margaret W. Rossiter as paradigmatic of the unequal distribution of fame between women and their male colleagues. At one point Rossiter considered naming this phenomenon the ‘Lise Effect’, but instead decided on the ‘Matilda Effect’ – now the conventional term in the history of science – after Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898), an American feminist and early sociologist of knowledge.

 

Read the full article here.

“Younger Women Need Role Models in order to Develop Ambition and Stamina”

Today, the UN celebrates women and girls in science. Education, research and academia in general were traditionally male-dominated and there is still a need for change before we can describe the field as gender neutral or equal. Academia today is not only lacking in women, but diversity in general. Yet, while we look forward at how we can tackle current obstacles, it is also important to look back in history and see how the role of women in science has changed over the last centuries.  

At the end of 2020, ALLEA published the third book in its series Discourses on Intellectual Europe Women in European Academies: From Patronae Scientiarum to Path-Breakers. This volume shares the stories of thirteen women whose names have made a mark on academies in Europe. To take a closer look, we had the chance to ask historian Prof. Ute Frevert, Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, author, and one of the editors of this book some questions. 

 

Question: In editing “Women in European Academies”, what did you learn or notice most commonly about the roles of women over the different countries and different disciplines? 

Ute Frevert: It was quite remarkable (and distressing) to see how all over Europe, the academic world in every discipline has been reluctant and adversarial to accepting female scholars and scientists. This lasted way into the 20th century, and the arguments that buttressed male monopolies were very similar. At the same time, individual women were extremely smart in moving around such obstacles, with passion, tenacity, and, all too rarely, with the help of progressive parents, friends, and husbands.     

Q.: Examining academia today, there are more women with on average better higher education degrees in Europe. Still, much fewer than men consider or achieve a career in academia. What changes have you been able to see in your career? 

U.T.: I have been socialized in the feminist movement of the 1970s, and since then we have definitely seen some success and progress. Yet, progress is far too slow, compared to the efforts made and the large number of qualified women who would love to pursue an academic career. Among doctoral students, the gender ratio is more or less balanced now. But we still see very few women in top positions.  

Q.: If asked why women belong in academia, why or how they can make a unique contribution, what would you say?  

U.T.: Honestly speaking, women do not have to make a unique contribution. They belong in academia as much as men do, just because they are both human beings with smart brains. So, in principle, there is no need to further justify women’s place in academia. In real life, however, women often have to be better, more innovative and original than men in order to make it.   

Q.: As an expert on emotions and history, what changes do you consider most relevant to these trends and emerging discourses on masculinity and feminism in society? 

U.T.: From a historical perspective, first- and second-wave feminism was important because they challenged and finally altered the categories applying to male versus female bodies, brains, and behaviour. They questioned the long-held notion of separate spheres, and they empowered women to move on. Becoming mentally more independent, women developed pride as well as self-confidence – which are essential prerequisites for any career.    

Q.: Looking forward, what would you like the role of women look like in academia? 

U.T.: I would like to see many more women in top positions, as full professors, research group leaders, institute directors, and presidents of academies. Younger women need role models in order to develop ambition and stamina. At the same time, being a role model does not come easy, because of complex expectations. While men just have to excel academically, women at the top are supposed to be excellent in many more matters. They have to show emotional skills like “feminine” empathy, kindness, understanding in personal relationships. They have to be accessible for all kinds of problems. Having a family proves that they lead a full life and know about motherly and wifely commitment – something that is never requested from her male colleagues. Such gendered expectations are very hard to meet and can result in mutual frustration.             

 

Prof. Ute Frevert is Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. Before joining the Institute in 2008, she taught modern history at the Universities of Berlin (FU), Konstanz, Bielefeld and Yale (USA). Her publications include: Women in German History (1989); Men of Honour: A Social and Cultural History of the Duel (1995);  A Nation in Barracks: Modern Germany, Military Conscription, and Civil Society (2004); Emotions in History – Lost and Found (2013); The Politics of Humiliation: A Modern History (2020).

Learn more about ALLEA’s book Women in European Academies: From Patronae Scientiarum to Path-Breakers and the series Discourses on Intellectual Europe.

The Science Academy’s Statement on Boğaziçi University (Turkey)

On 3 February 2021, the board of the Science Academy of Turkey (Bilim Akademisi) issued a statement about the events that followed the appointment of a new president to Boğaziçi University in Turkey. An addendum on developments at Boğaziçi University has been added on 8 February 2021.

Read the statement and addendum (PDF)

Open Call for Proposals: Future of Science Communication

ALLEA is proud to announce the Open Call for Proposals for the Future of Science Communication conference, to be held on 24-25 June 2021 in Berlin. The event is organised in cooperation with Wissenschaft im Dialog, the organisation for science communication in Germany. 

Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the two-day conference aims to bring together actors from research and practice of science communication. The goal is to provide a platform for stronger networking and exchange of activities and expertise in the field. We are looking for contributions from the following fields of research and practice: 

  • Trust in science 
  • The Covid-19 pandemic as a challenge for science communication 
  • Science communication in a digitized media world; Fake News/Disinformation
  • Science and politics 
  • Crisis communication with case studies (e.g. on climate change, Covid-19 pandemic) 
  • Target groups of science communication 
  • Citizen Science & Open Science 

We explicitly encourage the submission of contributions by researchers as well as practitioners whose research and work focus on science communication and the relationship between science, researchers and the public. Junior researchers should not be discouraged from sharing their insights. We are looking forward to receiving contributions from individuals with diverse backgrounds. 

The contributions for the conference programme can only be submitted using the application form. Please send the completed application to info@future-of-scicomm.eu by 28 February 2021.

We are looking forward to curating two days of interesting workshops, panels and discourse, for which we rely on your input and suggestions.  For more information and the proposal submission form, visit Wissenschaft im Dialog’s webpage. 

Download application form

Shaping the Future of Peer Review

ALLEA, the Global Young Academy (GYA), and STM (International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers) published today the summary of a series of cross-sectoral workshops on the future of peer review in an open, digital world.

Experts from across the world, representing different cultural and disciplinary traditions of peer review, convened virtually in November 2020 to discuss the future of peer review in an Open Science environment. Participants explored which models can best serve and reward the research community in both an enhanced and sustainable way.

Peer review is an essential element of scholarly communication and documentation processes and contributes to ensuring the quality and trustworthiness of modern research. The traditional models of peer review are, however, challenged by new digital modes of publication, and the wider range of research outputs envisaged as part of the move towards Open Science.

The workshops comprised a broad array of experts and actors including researchers, research funders, universities, publishers, libraries, the Open Science community and trade bodies. Main themes and areas for further consideration that emerged during the discussions included:

  1. Clarifying peer review and the roles of different actors in the system
  2. Building capacity for peer review: training, mentoring, inclusion and diversity
  3. Leveraging technology to deliver enhanced peer review
  4. Changes should be motivated by a strong evidence-base, collected through research, pilots and experimentation

Read the full summary.

New ALLEA Working Group Chairs on Science & Ethics and E-Humanities

Two new chairs have been elected in ALLEA’s working groups. In the Permanent Working Group Science and Ethics, Dr Maura Hiney (Royal Irish Academy) is taking over from Prof Göran Hermerén (Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities), who held the role since 2012. The E-Humanities Working Group elected Dr Maciej Maryl (Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences), who succeeds Dr Natalie Harrower (Royal Irish Academy).

Dr Hiney has a PhD in Molecular Diagnostics and Epizootology from the National University of Ireland Galway. She has previously been a member of the working group and was lead author of the revised European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity in 2017. She is currently Head of Post-Award and Evaluation at the Health Research Board Ireland.

After being appointed Dr Hiney said: “Becoming Chair of this Working Group is an honour that presents me with a fantastic opportunity to build awareness and policy visibility across Europe and within the European Commission about issues of ethics and research integrity that impact the quality and credibility of the rich outputs of the research community. Such trust in science by policymakers and the public is more important now than ever before.’’ 

Furthermore, Dr Maryl, PhD, is assistant professor at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences and founding Director of the Digital Humanities Centre at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is a literary scholar, sociologist and a translator.

ALLEA warmly thanks Prof Hermerén and Dr Harrower for their long-standing commitment and service to their working groups.

Breakthrough Prize Opens Public Nominations for Its 2022 Prizes

The public nomination period for the 2022 Breakthrough Prizes in Fundamental Physics, Life Sciences and Mathematics is now open. Nominations can be submitted online until 1 April 2021. While self-nominations are prohibited, anyone may nominate another person. The nomination forms and rules are available at breakthroughprize.org.

For the 10th year, the Breakthrough Prize, recognised as the world’s largest science prize, will honour top scientists, handing out three prizes in Life Sciences, one in Fundamental Physics and one in Mathematics. Each prize comes with a $3 million award. In addition, six New Horizons Prizes, each for $100,000, will be available to promising early-career researchers in the fields of Physics and Mathematics. Nominations will also be taken for the Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prize, an annual $50,000 award presented to early-career women mathematicians who have completed their PhDs within the previous two years.

The Breakthrough Prize, dubbed ‘The Oscars of Science’, hosts a live, globally televised gala awards ceremony to celebrate the laureates’ achievements and to foster broad popular support for scientific endeavours and inspire the next generation of scientists. The next ceremony is scheduled to take place in the fall of 2021 and will honour the 2021 and 2022 prize laureates.

ALLEA partners for the fifth year with the Breakthrough Prize, together with ResearchGate. The Breakthrough Prizes were founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki. The prizes have been sponsored by the personal foundations established by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Ma Huateng, Jack Ma, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki.

Selection Committees are composed of previous Breakthrough Prize laureates, who select the winners from the list of candidates generated during the nomination period.

 

Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics

One 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics ($3 million) will recognize an individual(s) who has made profound contributions to human knowledge. It is open to all physicists – theoretical, mathematical and experimental – working on the deepest mysteries of the Universe. The prize can be shared among any number of scientists. Nominations are also open for the New Horizons in Physics Prize, which will include up to three $100,000 awards for early-career researchers who have already produced important work in their fields.

The Selection Committee for the 2022 physics prizes includes: Eric Adelberger, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Charles Bennett, Sheperd Doeleman, Michael Green, Jens Gundlach, Alan Guth, Blayne Heckel, Joseph Incandela, Charles Kane, Alexei Kitaev, Andrei Linde, Arthur McDonald, Juan Maldacena, Eugene Mele, Lyman Page, Saul Perlmutter, Alexander Polyakov, Adam Riess, John Schwarz, Nathan Seiberg, Ashoke Sen, David Spergel, Andrew Strominger, Kip Thorne, Cumrun Vafa, Ewine F. van Dishoeck, Yifang Wang, Steven Weinberg, Rainer Weiss and Edward Witten.

 

Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences

Up to three 2022 Breakthrough Prizes in Life Sciences ($3 million each) will be awarded to individuals who have made transformative advances in understanding living systems and extending human life. One of the prizes is designated for work contributing to the understanding of Parkinson’s disease or other neurodegenerative disorders.

The Selection Committee for the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences includes: David Allis, James Allison, Victor Ambros, David Baker, Cornelia I. Bargmann, Alim Louis Benabid, Frank Bennett, David Botstein, Edward Boyden, Lewis Cantley, Emmanuelle Charpentier, Zhijian “James” Chen, Joanne Chory, Don Cleveland, Hans Clevers, Karl Deisseroth, Titia de Lange, Mahlon DeLong, Jennifer Doudna, Catherine Dulac, Stephen Elledge, Napoleone Ferrara, Jeffrey Friedman, Michael Hall, John Hardy, Ulrich Hartl, Helen Hobbs, Arthur Horwich, David Julius, Adrian Krainer, Eric Lander, Robert Langer, Virginia Lee, Richard Lifton, Dennis Lo, Kazutoshi Mori, Kim Nasmyth, Harry Noller, Roeland Nusse, Yoshinori Ohsumi, Svante Pääbo, Gary Ruvkun, Charles Sawyers, Alexander Varshavsky, Bert Vogelstein, Peter Walter, Robert Weinberg, Shinya Yamanaka, Richard Youle, Xiaowei Zhuang and Huda Zoghbi.

 

Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics

One 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics ($3 million) will be awarded to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the field of mathematics. Nominations are also open for the New Horizons in Mathematics Prize, which will include up to three $100,000 awards for early-career researchers who have already produced important work in their fields. In addition, up to three $50,000 Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes will be presented to early-career women mathematicians who have completed their PhDs within the previous two years (2019, 2020).

The Selection Committee for the 2022 math prizes includes: Ian Agol, Alex Eskin, Simon Donaldson, Martin Hairer, Maxim Kontsevich, Christopher Hacon, Vincent Lafforgue, Jacob Lurie, James McKernan, Terence Tao and Richard Taylor.

Information on the Breakthrough Prizes is available at breakthroughprize.org

Expert Workshop on Causality of Health Inequalities Held Online

On 2 December, the Scientific Committee of the ALLEA-FEAM-KNAW project on Health Inequalities in Europe welcomed external experts to its second workshop, which was held online. Dedicated to exploring causality of socioeconomic inequalities in health, over 50 participants analysed and debated new approaches to assessing causality in an interdisciplinary dialogue. 

Recent quasi-experimental studies have pointed out that a direct relationship between socioeconomic position and health could not be confirmed, and that factors such as education or income may not always lead to the assumption that there is a causal effect of such factors on health. Meanwhile, novel findings in genetics suggest a stronger role of genetic predisposition in ‘confounding’ as opposed to the causal effect of the indicators such as socioeconomic position and physical and mental wellbeing. This and other related perspectives were introduced and discussed by leading European experts in the field, who were joined by their North American counterparts despite the early hour across the pond.  

Moderated by Axel Börsch-Supan, member of the National Academy of Leopoldina and Johan Mackenbach, Chair of the Scientific Committee of this tripartite project, workshop attendees emphasized the importance of causation both in the scientific as well as policy context. As such, they called for the need to adequately address socioeconomic disadvantages vis-à-vis policymakers in a unified voice from scientists. 

Initially set to take place in March 2020 at the Leopoldina Academy in Berlin, this meeting was shifted to an online format due to the restrictions brought on by the current pandemic. In a next step, the Committee will start preparing the final workshop of this project, which will aim at evaluating current policies and interventions to reduce health inequalities. 

Read more about ALLEA’s Health Inequalities activities