PERITIA Public Lectures: [Un]Truths, Trust in an Age of Disinformation

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PERITIA – Policy, Expertise and Trust – is launching a series of public lectures from 6 April to 1 June 2021. Around the topic of ‘[Un]Truths: Trust in an Age of Disinformation’, these five meetings will explore the concept of trust and truth, both becoming contentious topics for science and democracy. Conspiracy theories disrupt political elections, disinformation campaigns target scientific consensus around climate change and vaccines, and anti-elite populism overshadows public debates. In the midst of a pandemic, citizens find themselves asking quintessential philosophical questions: what truth is, whom we can trust, or how we should trust. 

Hosted by the UCD Centre for Ethics in Public Life and the American University of Armenia, the lectures are open to all upon registration via Zoom and moderated by science communicator Shane Bergin. The first part of this online series runs every second Tuesday, from April to June 2021. Participants are invited to join an interactive Q&A debate after each lecture. Registration is free.

  • Lecture 1: Trust in Science

    6 April 2021, 17:00 CEST
    Naomi Oreskes, Harvard University

  • Lecture 2: Misunderstanding Conspiracy Theories

    20 April 2021, 17:00 CEST
    Quassim Cassam, Warwick University

  • Lecture 3: The Democratic Value of Truth

    4 May 2021, 17:00 CEST
    Michael Lynch, University of Connecticut

  • Lecture 4: Trustworthy Science Advice

    18 May 2021, 17:00 CEST
    Heather Douglas, Michigan State University

  • Lecture 5: Trust vs. Argument

    1 June 2021, 17:00 CEST
    Dan Sperber, Institut Jean Nicod

Read more and register here

PERITIA Online Discussion: Creating a Climate of Trust

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How can scientists and science communicators (re-)establish trust in trustworthy science in a changing media environment? As part of the international conference SCI:COM, PERITIA experts will discuss the different strategies used to tackle COVID-19 and their impact on trust in science communication under the motto “Creating a Climate of Trust in Science”.

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

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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.

Special Issue on Vulnerability and Trust

PERITIA Special Issue on Vulnerability and Trust

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How can we characterise the affective nature of trust? How can we explain the ethical demands that arise from deliberately making yourself vulnerable by trusting someone? What is the application of this to the question of the epistemic vulnerability involved in communication? And how can we explain trust and distrust of sources of knowledge in society?

These four questions are the focus of the new PERITIA Special Issue of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies this month. The work tackles the need to investigate what Annette Baier (1986) called “the variety of forms of trust” and “the varieties of vulnerability”.

The closing article “Vulnerability in Social Epistemic Networks” is the winner of the PERITIA special prize. In this paper, Emily Sullivan (EU Eindhoven), Max Sondag (TU Eindhoven), Ignaz Rutter (Universität Passau), Wouter Meulemans (TU Eindhoven), Scott Cunningham (University of Strathclyde), Bettina Speckmann (TU Eindhoven) and Mark Alfano (Macquarie University & Delft University of Technology) examine the nature of epistemic vulnerability within the virtual networks of social media.

Other articles in this volume include “Epistemic Vulnerability” by Casey Rebecca Johnson (University of Idaho), “From Vulnerability to Precariousness: Examining the Moral Foundations of Care Ethics” by Sarah Clark Miller (Penn State University) and “Expressive Vulnerabilities” by Joe Larios (Emory University).

The special issue is part of PERITIA’s investigation on the conditions under which citizens trust science-based policy advice. ALLEA is part of this EU-funded project that brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers from across nine countries.

Read more about this publication on PERITIA’s website.

Why Trust Experts?

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ALLEA’s EU-funded research project PERITIA has launched the new animation video “Why Trust Experts?“. Inspired by their principal investigator Maria Baghramian’s article “Trust in Experts: Why and Why Not”, the video invites everyone to reflect on the role of expertise in our daily lives.

The Covid-19 pandemic has shown once again that experts play a key role in advising politicians and citizens. There may be no better time to ask ourselves some relevant questions about trust in expertise.

  • How does trust in experts work?
  • How is trust in science related to trust in media?
  • Why is trust in expertise important for democracies?
  • How can we learn to trust trustworthy experts?

The short animation video summarizes the key questions of PERITIA’s research in the context of today’s pandemic crisis and raises some relevant points. It touches upon the different dimensions of trust in expertise from a philosophical perspective, the influential role of media (and social media) in how we access scientific information, or the difficult balance between science independence and policymaking.

In the dedicated webpage “Why trust Experts?“, PERITIA delves into these key questions including resources. The page is available to help you learn more about the topic and find more scientific contributions to the debates from the team and their partners.

About PERITIA

PERITIA is a Horizon 2020-funded research project exploring the conditions under which people trust expertise used for shaping public policy. The project brings together philosophers, social and natural scientists, policy experts, ethicists, psychologists, media specialists and civil society organisations to conduct a comprehensive multi-disciplinary investigation of trust in and the trustworthiness of policy related expert opinion. As part of consortium of 11 partners from 9 countries, ALLEA leads the work on public engament and interaction of the project.

Who to trust on Covid-19?

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ALLEA is pleased to announce the PERITIA webinar ‘Who to trust on Covid-19: When science advice gets “dirty” in the political mud’. The event will take place on 2 November (14:00-15:00 CET) and is part of the Berlin Science Week. Registration is already open.

The one-hour Q&A webinar will delve into the impact of this pandemic on trust in expertise with a particular focus on three questions:

  • What lessons can we draw from the handling of the pandemic for understanding trust in policy-driven expertise?
  • How have different countries dealt with the delicate enterprise of communicating and relying on uncertain and evolving evidence and advice in extremely difficult times?
  • Is a loss of public trust in expertise the “collateral damage” of this crisis or are people trusting experts more than before?

PERITIA experts will join the discussion with Dr Shane Bergin, who will moderate an interactive debate where participants will lead the questions of the roundtable. The speakers include:

Prof Maria Baghramian
Professor of American Philosophy at University College Dublin
PERITIA Lead Investigator

Tracey Brown
Director of Sense about Science

Prof José van Dijck
Professor of Media Studies at University of Utrecht

Prof Bobby Duffy
Director of The Policy Institute at King’s College London

Dr Carlo Martini
Assistant Professsor of Philosophy at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University

PERITIA is an EU-funded research project and ALLEA is part of the consortium. The project explores the conditions under which people trust expertise used for shaping public policy. It brings together philosophers, social and natural scientists, policy experts, ethicists, psychologists, media specialists and civil society organisations to conduct a comprehensive multi-disciplinary investigation of trust in and the trustworthiness of policy related expert opinion.

Trust in Expertise at times of Covid-19

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The EU-funded research project PERITIA just launched its first newsletter dedicated to Covid-19 and trust in expertise. The issue includes highlights from the first five months of the project with a selection of essays, news, interviews, blog posts, and podcasts from its team dealing with how the pandemic is affecting trust in expertise and science advice systems. A general introduction to the project’s research agenda emphasizes three key questions:

  • What is the role of expertise in democracies?
  • How should science inform political decisions?
  • How can we prevent a populist backlash against expertise?

If you are curious about how PERITIA’s team has engaged in public debates and research around these questions, we kindly invite you to take a look and let us know what you think. If you enjoy it, don’t forget to subscribe here.

The project is conducting a comprehensive multi-disciplinary investigation of trust in, and the trustworthiness of, policy-related expert opinion. Its research will develop a theoretical framework to understand the fundamentals of trust, which will be complemented empirically with surveys and in-lab experiments.

Science advice and public engagement

A central part of PERITIA’s work will consist of a comparison of existing science advice mechanisms in four European countries. PERITIA researchers will investigate how expert advice is elicited and which of the available models is more trust enhancing.

The project’s plans also reach beyond research. Investigators seeks to design effective indicators and tools to build trust in expertise informing policy. Their conclusions will be tested in a series of citizens’ forums where experts, policymakers, and citizens will engage in face-to-face discussions on climate change.

ALLEA is a partner in the PERITIA consortium, which is formed by eleven organisations from nine countries, and is leading its work on communications and public engagement. The project is a follow-up of the ALLEA working group Truth, Trust and Expertise.

PERITIA Call for Abstracts: Trust in Expertise in a Changing Media Landscape

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The EU-funded research project PERITIA has published a call for abstracts on the topic “Trust in Expertise in a Changing Media Landscape”. Accepted papers will be discussed in an international conference in Berlin on 18-19 March 2021. The keynotes of the event include Prof Onora O’Neill (Cambridge), Prof Natali Helberger (Amsterdam), Prof Michael Latzer (Zurich), Prof Christoph Neuberger (Berlin). The project invites abstracts of up to 300 words and a short bio of up to 100 words by 1 September, 2020.

The conference will highlight the question of trust in a changing media landscape, addressing the following three general questions:

  1. How does trust in expertise play out in the context of a changing media landscape, in particular the transformation from legacy media (newspapers, tv) to digital platforms (social media, blogs, vlogs)?
  2. Can we develop a better understanding of conditions of trust and trustworthiness in the context of digital platforms and social media? How may conditions differ in various (European) countries or in the (geopolitical) contexts of different continents?
  3. What is the impact of digital media and its users on (institutional) trust in governance that is rooted in scientific evidence and fact-finding?

Possible topics may include (but are not restricted to):

  • Analytical perspectives on, and empirical investigations of, public debates concerning the value of scientific expertise, e.g. in the area of climate change and the corona-pandemic.
  • Theoretical and practice-based studies on the (changing) conditions for anchoring public trust in institutions and professionals; the ethics of digital communication.
  • Empirical and investigative studies on the role of legacy media vis-à-vis digital platforms in undermining or enhancing trust in social institutions.

Submission Details

This call solicits presentations and papers from a number of (inter)disciplinary fields, bringing together perspectives from media and communication studies, information science, public policy, philosophy, social and political sciences, and more. Papers will be selected on the basis of quality of content and suitability to the theme. The two day conference will feature up to 60 presentations in various panels and keynotes. Selected papers will be considered for publication in a special issue or edited volume.

This conference aims to foster the exchange of ideas across national and disciplinary borders between senior and junior researchers. We have therefore reserved limited funds for travel grants to support excellent contributions from early career scholars and scholars from the global south. Please indicate your interest when submitting your abstract.

PERITIA invites abstracts of up to 300 words and a short bio of up to 100 words by 1 September, 2020.

Abstracts should be sent to peritia@allea.org.

Information regarding acceptance should be available by early October 2020.

ALLEA is a partner in the PERITIA Consortium.

PEriTiA Call for Papers: Social Indicators of Trust in Experts

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ALLEA is pleased to share a PEriTiA Call for Papers for the upcoming international workshop “Social Indicators of Trust in Experts” to be held in Paris on 1-2 October 2020. The deadline for submission of abstracts has been extended to 30 April. The aim of this event is to help understand what informal social indicators people use in order to evaluate the trustworthiness of experts.

PEriTiA International Workshop: Social Indicators of Trust in Experts

Date: October 1-2 2020

Organizer(s): Gloria Origgi and Ty Branch, PEriTiA

Location: Paris, Institut Jean Nicod, Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS)

Keynote speakers: Dan Sperber, Mark Alfano, Cristina Bicchieri

Call for Papers

When we are not competent enough ourselves, we rely on experts to advise us and to act in our best interest, with the vulnerability involved in such a dependence on the competence and goodwill of others. How do we evaluate the trustworthiness of experts? Since we appeal to experts when we lack relevant epistemic competence, we cannot judge their trustworthiness on direct epistemic grounds. Reliance on experts and appeal to their domains of expertise extends well beyond traditional measures of impact, authority, and ranking. Formal indicators are complemented by informal social indicators (quality, credibility and trustworthiness), which work as cues of reputation that are distributed in a social environment.

The aim of this conference, as part of the EU funded project PEriTiA – Policy, Expertise, and Trust in Action, is to help understand what informal social indicators people use in order to evaluate the trustworthiness of experts. Among the informal social indicators there are emotions, gossip, authority, social status and the biases that underscore them. For example, when lay persons rapidly estimate the credibility of a doctor, they rely on informal social indicators like recommendations from trusted individuals (word-of-mouth), perceived social prestige (social status), and emotional response to the doctor. Such examples show how social indicators can combine and conflict in expected and unexpected ways, the consequences of this socially shaped reliance on expertise, and their overall social impact.

On the subject of informal social indicators, we welcome theoretical and empirical contributions (including case studies) addressing epistemic, normative and practical aspects of trust in experts. Questions/topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:

  1. How do people use reputation in order to establish the epistemic credibility of experts?
  2. What is epistemic authority and when is it reasonable to attribute it to experts?
  3. How status relations influence the credibility of experts?
  4. To what extent can gossip be a reliable way of extracting information from an epistemic social environment?
  5. What are the social biases that participate into the formation of credibility deficits of a group?
  6. What are the emotional aspects that influence the attribution of epistemic authority and status to experts?

Papers will be presented in sessions of 40 minutes and a selection of papers will be published in a journal.

Abstract submission details

We invite abstracts of 500-1000 words by 30 April 2020.

Abstracts should be sent to SocialIndicatorsParis2020@gmail.com.

Information regarding acceptance should be available by mid-May.

‘Trust in a Changing World’ – PEriTiA kicks off with international symposium in Dublin

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PEriTiA – Policy, Expertise and Trust in Action – has been launched today with the inaugural symposium ‘Trust in a Changing World’ hosted by University College Dublin (UCD). Funded for three years by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, the project addresses the rise of an anti-elitist discourse questioning the trustworthiness of scientific expertise. Researchers will explore the conditions under which people trust expert opinion that shapes public policy.

Keynote speakers of today’s multi-disciplinary symposium include David Farrell (UCD/Royal Irish Academy), José van Dijck (Utrecht University/KNAW), Bobby Duffy (King’s College London), Susan Owens (University of Cambridge/British Academy), and Judith Simon (University of Hamburg).

The discussion will help illuminate the main topics to be further investigated by PEriTiA in the next 3 years. You can follow the discussions on Twitter and Facebook under the hashtag #TrustInAction. The lectures will be made available on PEriTiA’s website.

Learn more about PEritiA

Follow the project on Twitter and Facebook