February 2022
NCAS
Public Lecture Series
Protecting
the Public from Misinformation:
“Inoculating” with a Weakened Form of Misinformation
YouTube Live
Event with Q and A
Presented by John
Cook, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Monash Climate Change
Communication Research Hub
Wednesday, February 9, 7pm
US/Eastern (UTC-05:00)
NCASVideo
YouTube Channel:
For more information, call
the NCAS Skeptic Line at 240-670-NCAS (6227).
ncas@ncas.org
The
public are overwhelmed with misinformation and conspiracy
theories, causing confusion about important issues such as
climate change, vaccination, and COVID-19. How do we
respond to the firehose of falsehoods? One way to
effectively neutralize the influence of misinformation and
pseudoscience is logic-based inoculation. This applies the
idea of vaccination to knowledge—we can build immunity to
misinformation by exposing people to a weakened form of
misinformation. In other words, explain the misleading
techniques used in misinformation. Dr. John Cook will
outline his psychological and critical thinking research
into inoculation and how he has used gamification and
cartoons to overcome some of the psychological hurdles
facing scientists and educators.
John Cook is a
postdoctoral research fellow with the Climate Change
Communication Research Hub at Monash University. His
research focus is on using critical thinking to build
resilience against misinformation. In 2007, he founded
Skeptical Science, a website that won the 2011 Australia
Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change
Knowledge. In 2020, he published the book
Cranky Uncle
vs. Climate Change: How to Understand and Respond to
Climate Science Deniers, applying critical thinking,
inoculation research, and cartoons to engage and educate
readers about climate misinformation. He recently released
the Cranky Uncle game, combining critical thinking,
cartoons, and gamification to build players' resilience
against misinformation. He currently works with
organizations like Facebook and NASA to develop
evidence-based responses to climate misinformation.
There will be an online question-and-answer segment after
the presentation.
How
to Watch and Participate in this Online Event:
2) Use the link
https://youtu.be/KBz0s5cMAbA
. If typing the link, use "0" (zero).
3) The live stream begins
shortly before 7pm US/Eastern (UTC-05:00) on Wednesday,
February 9, 2022.
4) To post questions, you
must be signed in to a Google account.
5) Post your questions in
the chat window to the right of the video player when the
live stream is active.
6) Click into where it says
"Say something..." and begin typing (up to 200 characters).
Then click the send icon
.
Along with your question, please post what city or
town you're in.
February PhACT Lecture
Our skeptical neighbors to the north, the
Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking (PhACT),
will host their next online event on Sunday, February 20
at 2 PM ET.
Faye Flam, science journalist and
opinion columnist for the Bloomberg News Service, and
Dave
Cragin, PhD, Director in Quality Assurance at a
large pharmaceutical company, will present, "Media
coverage of the pandemic - what did journalists get
right, what could be done better?" Event details at
http://www.phact.org/meetings.php.
March NCAS Lecture
The March NCAS lecture will be a YouTube live event;
details TBD.
Confessions of Coincidence
By Scott Snell
I've had another entertaining coincidence recently. On
the afternoon of January 22, a Facebook friend suggested
that I "friend" a friend of his named Ricky Piel.
That evening, I
attended a hockey game at Capital One Arena. During an
intermission, I briefly saw two people dressed as bananas
pass by on the concourse. I was curious about them, but
not much. After the game, I saw them again on the Metro
subway platform, and asked why they were dressed that
way. Their answer wasn't interesting (something like, "we
just thought it would be fun"), but at that moment my mind
finally got the pun of Piel/peel!
Naturally I
alerted them immediately about this important sign
of...something, and they seemed to love it even more than
I did. (People who dress as bananas are apparently easily
entertained.)
My favorite part
of the experience was my having to be exposed to the "2nd
incident" (seeing banana people) twice, and then engage
them in conversation before my brain's pattern detector
suddenly found the pun.
For those skeptics among
you (and I hope that's every single one), I've provided
documentation below. (Yes, I actually Googled "jan 22
capitals senators banana" and found a photo.)
At left is a redacted
screen grab of my friend's Facebook message to me about
Ricky Piel.
As I've written in other Shadow
columns about coincidences, "We're surrounded by an
incredible number of occurrences and details, only some of
which we even notice, so we should expect some random
'alignments' of two to happen now and then. We never notice
the many misalignments, so when an alignment occurs, it
seems remarkable, and could be quite affecting."
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