 My name is Simon Clark, a projects coordinator at the European Geosciences Union and welcome to this webinar on fighting fake news and identifying and addressing scientific misinformation. This webinar will last one hour. We have time for questions and answers at the end of the webinar. The webinar will itself outline what constitutes misinformation, how it is generated and how it spreads. Today's webinar will just be focusing on the topic of science policy using a recent example of the EU Commission's proposed nature restoration law. Our guest speakers today are Hendrik Boons, policy analyst at the European Commission Joint Research Centre and Guy Pierre, ecologist and commentator on our cultural policy at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research. So to begin, Hendrik, would you like to take it away? Okay, so my name is Helmholtz Boons. I'm working for the European Commission Joint Research Centre and they are specifically in the behavioral insights team, which is called the competent centre on behavioral insights. So my background is not in natural sciences, not in geosciences, although I have a bachelor degree in geography and economics but in my academic career I then switched to environmental economics and behavioral economics and we recently had a project on misinformation and how to best pre-bunk and debunk misinformation being in the European Commission and I want to give a brief outline of this project and before that providing some, like a brief introduction into the behavioral aspects of misinformation and disinformation. So for the sake of this talk we will think about misinformation as incorrect information that is shared by people online or offline without knowing, without a specific intention of deceiving someone whereas when we normally talk about disinformation, especially being the focus of most of the policies and regulations of the European Commission I'm talking about intentionally shared misinformation in order to deceive people or in order to reach certain goals so this is normally understood as disinformation. What I want to focus on or what I normally build these talks is that we start at the roots, at the psychological roots of misinformation why do people share misinformation, why do people believe in misinformation here symbolized by the roots of the tree to the right then what are the consequences of misinformation so if the tree is growing what are the consequences which can often be dire especially when we are talking for example about health related misinformation but also in terms of misinformation related to climate change for example they got negative consequences in terms of the policies people support for example then how can we or specific institutions or the European Commission in particular how can we fight misinformation and then on the right hand side how can we build a society that is resilient against misinformation this being one of the very explicit goals of the European Commission to build European citizens resilience against misinformation so to enable them to fight misinformation to spot misinformation themselves for the sake of time I will be mostly or exclusively concentrate on the roots of the psychological foundations and also on ways to fight misinformation because this was the focus of the projects that I want to introduce to you starting with the roots many of you might know that actually psychology has a quite developed literature on conspiracy theories and what the psychological roots of conspiracy theories are on the right hand side you see a nice popular psychology books by Rob Brotherton that I can recommend that this provides quite a nice introduction to the psychological foundations of people's belief in conspiracy theories and conspiracy theories that you defined as attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful and malevolent actors and the three words you're highlighted are actually explaining or are hinting towards three main psychological reasons or causal underpinnings of people's beliefs and conspiracy theories as humans we are prone to look for patterns in things that are happening and this is related to cognitive and epistemic factors so how we arrive at the truth how we use our brains in order to deduce if something is true or not so we are looking for patterns we're looking for a system something that can explain certain events we are also very very prone to monitoring social factors so this is relating to the powerful we are very sensitive to power hierarchies to the social networks in which we are acting for example to the extent that people who are in a less powerful situation a less powerful social situation are tending to be more receptive or more likely to believe in conspiracy theories and in relation to the aspect of malevolent actors here based on how humans developed we are prone to a very very receptive to uncertain environments so when something is happening when something is seen as being potentially threatening to our cells this can trigger very very intuitive behavior or to resist or to protect yourself against these factors and this is also one reason why people for example in an existentially threatened situations can be thrown to believe more in conspiracy theories conspiracy theories is of course just one can be one aspect of misinformation my brother actually also wrote a book recently on why we fall for fake news which I can also recommend it's a light introduction to the topic also delves into the history of how news became the news that they are today based like starting from like a very very slow environment where we had to wait for information for weeks for example for example over the Atlantic not to arrive up until today where we basically have news in real time where it's actually difficult to not to receive any news where we barely can even choose to consume news basically news are just there and we have to consume them also almost what we did in a prior study which was focused on COVID-19 misinformation but whose insights can also be to some extent expanded to misinformation more generally for example misinformation related to climate change is that we more or less categorized the specific psychological behavior variables that can explain why people believe in misinformation or why people share misinformation and we basically used all the literature that came out in 2020 2021 on COVID-19 misinformation and that investigated why which people were more prone to believe or share misinformation we categorized all these factors so very basic like people's age people's gender people's educational background how these factors affected believe or sharing of misinformation their personality, their general beliefs, cognitive factors so the likelihood of reflection so reflecting before sharing something or some people share something more intuitively so they don't think a lot about information before they share something social aspects of how embedded people are in a social network, how their perceptions and emotions are so if people are more emotional or also their political aspects of people that tend to be more associated with the right or the left wing of the political spectrum. So this is how we approach this, this particular aspect of COVID-19 misinformation here and we found a lot of correlation also to misinformation more generally so there's a lot of literature already that shows that people who are tend to be more reflective in decision making are less likely to believe in share misinformation people who are more on the right tend to be more likely to share misinformation, especially if this misinformation relates to political topics. But of course these variables don't really explain why people misinformation they're lost to identify. I'm certain groups of people who are more prone to be receptive to misinformation but they don't necessarily explain the reason why people share misinformation. So just to delve a bit deeper into the potential reasons I wanted to ask, I wanted to participate, wanted to participate in a Slido survey that I've prepared here. There should be a link in the chat now you can also scan this URL code you can also go on Slido.com and type in the hashtag EGU. We can do that right now at the same time I have to start the survey so maybe while you're joining would be great to have a look at just one question it would be great if you can just. I give you maybe one minute one and a half minutes to indicate what you think is the reason that for the main reason for people to share misinformation. This is the first answers getting in I'm not showing them yet so that you're not affected by other people's responses, thinking how many people are in this career 29 people so I'll already certain responses. It's already looking interesting for me because maybe as a background to be asked this why I asked this question also I think. So a year ago in a talk that I gave at the European Commission and it looks relatively similar to the responses I saw them. Okay, already. Almost everyone responded. Okay, so I will show the results now and as I can see or as you can see here as well. The main answer that you have been giving us that they are convinced so they share things that align with their opinions. And they basically don't really care if it's true or false information that they're sharing close, not close but second is that inattentiveness or the account that people have other priorities that's more likely to to get a reaction from people or to get likes for example on Twitter or Facebook for example, and only 4% of you think that it's a result of being confused so that people think they're sharing something which is true but they're actually sharing something false. Back to the presentation. This is basically a question related to a paper by Gordon Penny Cook and colleagues where they also they do an experiment actually to find out what the main reasons are. They basically have the way they design this experiment allows them to differentiate. So they're not just asking people what they think is the reason but they're setting up an experiment that allows them to differentiate between the three, the three different accounts. So essentially what they find is that the account that you all indicated to be the most prominent the preference account so they don't care if it is false they want to share this information is actually the, the reason that is found by any cook and colleagues to be the least prominent reason why people share this information. So they find that 33 so a third of people they think it is true but it's actually false so they're confused and or almost half of the participants. They share something because they're inattentive to the falsity or the, the, the veracity of the information so they are. They care more for likes they don't really pay attention to the veracity. I think that this is to be always the case this is one study, I wouldn't take this for like 100% that this is always the case but it's still I think interesting to see that we sometimes assume people share misinformation because of their preferences which is of course the case and which can give them certain context context given certain misinformation narratives. This is the case and these percentages can be very, very relatively higher of course, but at least in the study by any cook which was published in nature, and the distribution was differently. So, this is also important when we think about how what to do about misinformation right because we need to take into account that people have the same information of which inattentiveness or confusion are two. In order to select the best interventions to fight misinformation, we can draw here from a set of different types of interventions pre banking on the left hand side which which can help. It is at a time and place and space where people are not yet exposed to misinformation. So before people see misinformation, they can be informed about the threats that they can be informed about the strategies that that misinformation is using to up to the right hand side. So this is plain debunking so setting the record straight basically in our experiment we focus on pre banking and debunking. And explicitly what we wanted to find out is if the European Commission, which is one actor that is debunking or pre banking what that has to deal with misinformation, if they can safely debunk and pre bank. There are people who don't even trust the European Union. So, people who don't trust the institution that is telling them this is misinformation, or be careful misinformation might be incoming so pre banking. And what we did. So we basically we ran an experiment and online experiment in four countries of the European Union, October 2022. Three different types of climate change related misinformation three different articles related to covert 19 different misinformation, and some of them were pre banked. So they got an explanation of what common strategies are used by misinformation articles others are debunked after they encounter misinformation, basically telling them these are the strategies, and this is wrong and this is right. So we asked people. What do you think about the different types of misinformation that you see, and you can see here, there is some agreement with the claims so related to climate change was for example, that the climate models are very, very unreliable or that there is no scientific consensus on climate change, you see roughly a quarter of the participants agree at least to one of these claims, at least a bit or so they agree or very much agree. There is some intention to endorse these articles so to share these articles to tell them this is correct. There's a bit more. And willingness to disagree so also to to share an article or to say this is false information, and roughly a quarter. Find any on any dimension that we asked about this, these articles completely incredible, but also meaning on the other hand, that three quarters are more or less find at least some credibility in these articles that we show them. So we wanted to find out now, how well do our debunks and pre banks work, and either the neutral debunk which has no information on who is responsible for debunking, and debunks that are coming from European Commission. And these ABCD these are the different outcome variables that we test. So what we see here, the debunks and pre banks they all work in reducing the agreement with the main claim. They are also quite effective in reducing the, their people's assessments of the credibility. They are mostly also effective in reducing their intentions to share an article to agree with it. So what we see it's, it's a bit less prominent here for example for the preview on from the European Commission. And it's more challenging to actually increase people's likelihood to share the article to denounce it to disagree with in order to make to warn others about it. What we see here is the more people are trusting of the European Union the less likely they are to agree with the misinformation the less likely are they, they are to find it credible etc to share it. And for to agree with it, but they are more likely to disagree with it. So this is for all misinformation that we're looking at so aggregated over climate change and covert misinformation we have. I have this year it's a bit less legible unfortunately also broken down by the types of climate change or covert for these two outcome variables it's mostly the same for here, we can see that climate change seems to be climate change misinformation seems to be a bit less receptive to debunks and pre banks. Exactly why that is the case, and there appears to be no like floor effect that there is just less people that believe in it in the first place so that it's less that these debunks debunks can accomplish that appears not to be the case or those people who are climate change misinformation seem to be more resistant to these interventions that we show them. What we see here was the original aim of the of the study to find out of the debunks that are coming from the European Commission are more effective for people that are very very trusting in the European Commission, those are the people on the inside of this graph. And here the people who are less than average, trusting in the European Union. Basically what we see overall is that there is contrary to our expectations that there's appears to be no big interaction effect so mostly the European Commission is a pre bank, pre bank, irrespective of their recipients trust in the European Union, which is good news contrary to what we predicted. There are some qualifications to the statements, but that's our main takeaway from this. This is also it's good to the summary so our approach is it's important to understand why people believe in misinformation or share misinformation or to fight it effectively. Identify the profile that we did the report is not equal to understanding the cost per se but it might still be relevant if you want to, for example, target specific profiles of or segments of consumers to protect them because they need to protection. Pre banks and debunks work. But there might be a harder challenge for climate change related misinformation. They work also when they come from European Commission. Pre banks mostly were irrespective of people's trust in the EU there are some qualifications that are just set for pre banks. Mostly it works irrespective of people's trust in the European Union, and sorry debunks can be less effective for people with low trust in the EU and more effective for people with high trust in the EU. It was the last figure that I showed you whether there were some interaction but this was we just for one or two of the four outcome variables so it's not a consistent pattern. And this is from my side. Just if you want something practical so tips on countering conspiracy theories and misinformation there is a lot out there. I can also give you more literature if you want but this is just a very like a one piece, one sheet that we came up with at the beginning of the whole COVID crisis with very, very set for researchers that you can scan you if you're interested or I can share that in the chat as well. Thank you, Hendrik maybe you could share that in the chat for people. Then we'll move on to our second speaker guy. Okay, thank you very much. First, Hendrik for your fascinating introduction into what is misinformation and why we have to address it. In my presentation, what I'm going to do is to take it directly into the situation of the nature restoration law and our role in this case as scientists in trying to debunk misinformation. Based on the situation that occurred during the last summer and currently with the trial of negotiations. I want to start actually my presentation with acknowledging the fact that I'm not working alone I'm not working in a vacuum, but rather within the context of many projects that I'm involved in and with many other people and projects. This is a project from IDIV an integration project within we've set and several projects where we tried to understand, especially the topic of agricultural sustainability and trying to help help farmers in improving the functioning for especially agricultural systems. I'm personally a conservation biologist actually one of my expertise is butterflies. But I realized long ago already that in order to achieve nature protection nature restoration aims we have to work with people and with systems and that's how I started working on the common agricultural policy is one of the main topics that I'm working on. But again to put a bigger context beyond the people and then projects that we're working on. Let's put everything in the context of what is currently happening in the world. We are living in a period of multiple crisis we have climate change happening very fast, particularly now. We have biodiversity losses and they're accelerating their worsening the pressures on ecosystems are worsening. And this includes also pressure on ecosystem services we are losing pollinators pest controllers, soil erosion and degradation land degradation are severe problems. And these also are influencing water. They're influencing food. And therefore we are seeing food crisis which I would still not say food security in this broader form, but many people are experiencing this we have health crisis which is shown not only by covered but many other type of diseases, including also mental diseases. We also have other crisis which we shouldn't forget. So our system is affected also by the human anthropogenic environment we are real that we're living in inequity and inequality are major crisis at the moment. We have a democratic backsliding meaning that we are losing on democracies. And also what we call a financial systems crisis where financial systems are collapsing partly because we are utilizing earth resources to a level which in which Earth cannot support us and climate change is only one out of the many crisis we are experiencing probably the one that we are hearing most often in the news and we have already heard from Henrik how severe a problem of misinformation and disinformation is in the context of climate. But what I want to come in and is into the question of what do we do with all that how do we address these crisis. And here we need to realize how urgent it is to take an action. Here in the graphic produced by the world in data they're trying to estimate how fast will we need to change given that every year we're delaying our action our political action. And if you look at such a graph, or at least at me as an as an expert in the field when I see such a graph I get really stressed, because this graph means, by now, we are going towards a complete collapse of the system. Either the system will bring us to collapse, or we have to step down our mission so fast that things have to change dramatically and immediately. And this also applies to biodiversity and biodiversity losses, which are occurring very fast we're still seeing not only deforestation but even accelerating deforestation we're still losing habitats in Europe. And the main question is, why is it that we don't see policy taking serious response to these crisis. So something is going wrong with our policy policies. And, and now we have to put it in the context of science versus the rest of the world as a scientist I have to accept the fact that I'm paid by public money I'm doing my work I'm a single person many of my colleagues are persons as well we're not stakeholders, we're not holding a stake we're trying to help society we're trying to understand the world. And, of course, as a conservation biologist, we're extremely concerned for good reasons because we're well informed about the severity of the crisis. But when we're trying to inform politicians, we cannot anticipate that they will take our recommendations because they have many others that will shout with different voices and eventually they have to take decisions that will affect the voters and the voters will is the starting point. But in between the votes that happen once in four years or five years in a democratic situation in a stable democratic situation. There are also a lot of different lobby processes and pressures, particularly there are papers showing already from the 90s and even 80s that small and homogeneous lobbies have a lot more impact than large even consensus groups that are very heterogeneous they can press a lot more effectively towards a political pressure towards achieving their goals and eventually change of political structure or inaction which is not just inaction it's resistance to changes. So it's not just that politicians don't do something they resist very actively and soon I'll demonstrate how they do that and why. And in this we have to ask why is it not that only policies are failing but politicians are not serving the aims that we think that they should be doing. And that's partly because it's our 25,000 lobbyists as a conservative, conservative estimation in Brussels alone if the investments are about three billions a year. We're talking about 33 lobbyists to each person in the European Parliament. So what is happening with European politics is that we have what you call the Brussels bubble where lobbies are actually funding governance are affecting governance they're part of the governance in some cases. And many of the Parliament members, for instance, are acting to a certain extent independently of what voters might think that they're doing. And this is where we come into the arena of misinformation and it is being used actually as a tool as an instrument for many actors group in and this is case we're talking about this information by generating confusing. We know that there's an interest of bringing scientific uncertainty to climate change and to create misunderstanding or confusion among among the public. There's a very good paper demonstrating the strengths of what you call pluralistic ignorance meaning that most people think differently than what they should be thinking, or they even think that they're in a minority, whereas they're actually in the majority. So a recent paper from the US has demonstrated that most people are concerned about climate change, but they are thinking that they're actually in minority in thinking this way. Meaning they think that they're actually isolated and operating alone, whereas actually the majority of the population is in fact worried about climate change. So misinformation is actually an instrument in driving some decision making and it's weakening science it's weakening evidence. You can spread it around in order to polarize debates and we are seeing that if you speak to farmers, they usually are not against the environment they're not anti environment. Nevertheless, what you're hearing in the context of nature restoration or agriculture you usually years if farmers are anti environment, and that's actually not the reality, and this is leading to polarization in society. This leads also farmers to feeling that they're alone and isolated from the rest of society and then of course they will go and vote to certain political parties or will feel that they are represented by those that actually are misrepresenting them. And this leads also to bias decision making. And I'm going to demonstrate how this is happening in the reality of the nature restoration law, which many of us as scientists were really astonished about the strength of resistance during the last summer. So what happened was that the European Commission as part of the grand deal released an instrument which is complementing other European policy, we already had the bird directives we had the habitats directives that what the framework directives. And of course we had also the common agricultural policy the common fisheries policies, and we still are not managing to stop biodiversity losses, even in Europe. And the European Commission published the nature restoration law as a means to address policy failures until now. In summer this year, there were huge number of claims against the nature restoration law that were raised by some opponents of this legislation piece. And many of the claims when I was observing them and many of my colleagues were observing them where we were really like looking at that and saying, what is going on here. So what comes if people are claiming things which are so wrong. And I'm not going to go through all the various claims that were put, but we saw a major attack prior to the decision that were supposed to be taken by the parliament. So we heard claims like that the nature restoration law as well as the sustainable use regulation which was published as well would reduce deal. Would you reduce production and consequently can risk food security that it will take away jobs that it will place a burden of society that we cannot maintain or we cannot take this this burden, especially in the times of war. We heard that it will prevent Europe from feeding the world and that it will force farmers to abandon 10% of agricultural land. What you're seeing here are basically misinformation and what I'm going to do in the coming minutes is to demonstrate what we did with this information and how we addressed it. So after talking to various stakeholders we realize that the strength of attack on the nature restoration may lead to a complete rejection of this law at the parliament and will completely stop a much needed legislation. There will be four authors and later on with 6000 signatures. So scientists, we checked of course that these are scientists have been signing a call for the European Union to be ambitious to take this legislation onwards to take the evidence to use the science and to continue with the nature restoration law. I think that we had signatures from all over the European Union, including also countries beyond that we did not invite scientists outside but we did not say no. Most of these were environmental scientists but we need to remember the science science even about topics like the nature restoration law also includes political sciences and social sciences economists. So we had a lot of different scientists that scientists. And in the coming minutes I'm going to give you some examples of what these people have been signing what have we said in response to these claims. So we took them one after the other, and we debunked them systematically using the science using what we know that is the science behind. So let's take some examples. First of all the claim that the nature restoration law and the sustainable use regulation will risk food security. And of course we have to start with the reality something that everybody feels and understands. So in this, in this sense, it is the truth that if you take out land from production at any scale you're talking about then you produce less and if you produce less then of course, you will have less production almost necessarily. But is this really a risk to food security. So if you upscale this question of production losses you need to ask what are actually the real reasons of food security what are the real problems. So first of all, nature restoration usually takes place in places that are less productive. So production reductions are likely marginal and you can actually avoid them by certain agricultural production methods. The real risk to food security are coming from environmental collapse climate change loss of biodiversity pollination soil degradation etc. And if you want to stop these, you want to restore nature because you need to stop. So degradation by putting trees or structures. And so the reality shown by science as we're actually talking about nature protection as a means to secure production to secure future food. It makes no sense to even claim that by protection of nature you will risk food security if anything you will achieve resilience of agricultural production. A second example is this question of burden on society. We have to ask what is exactly society here. This is complete misinformation because society is not just farmers and not even just the minority of farmers that might be affected negatively. It actually might be affected positively in the example of agriculture is correct for also fisheries so some might lose their job, some might need to produce less, but is that a burden on society. So if you're looking now at agriculture as an example and of course there are also fisheries or others. So society is actually currently paying twice. It's not three times we're paying by subsidies to farmers 55 billion a year in the EU, and we are bearing the cost of unsustainable farmers farming by climate change by diverse declines by pesticide overuse nitrogen and pollution, leaking into leaching into water systems, we are experiencing water scarcity and quality, and it includes also health effects, so we need to pay the health consequences. And of course, the lack of access to natural environments, also for our mental health. So the nature restoration law was accompanied by an impact assessment demonstrating that even if you look just at the monetary aspects just the money aspect than the benefits to costs are estimated 12 to one. And so, in this case we're talking about the cost efficient investment into insurance for health, well being farm resilience and food security. So if we go beyond just monetary benefits it's clear that we're not talking about the burden to society but rather an investment in insurance. Another claim that I want to debunk here is this claim that farmers will have to abandon 10% land because of the nature restoration law, which is interesting because, yes, you might want to take some land out of production for instance for the purpose of rewetting or restoring or rewilding some areas, especially these areas are not productive or this is creating health or climate effects. But actually the nature restoration law never claims that we need to take 10% out of production. And in fact, the 10% target is already included somewhere else which is the common agricultural policy without going into details here. And actually this is misinformation because if you're using the word abandonment, you're actually talking about a process where farmer is abandoning the land which usually is taking place at the farm level. And usually this happens in remote areas where farmers don't have enough support from the common agricultural policy, and consequently they are not economically viable. So the problem is inequity and inefficient efficiency of cop payments, and the 55 billions that we are not spending efficiently. The nature restoration law in this sense is actually the means to address the deficiencies in current policies, especially the cup and one of the claims that we're always brought up is that if you ask farmers to stop producing or fisheries to stop in a certain area you need to compensate these people. And so it makes no sense to claim that you will abandon the land without making sure that you will compensate these people for these losses, which is what the nature restoration law could be doing. To start the wrapping up of this story, I gave some examples of the many this is published in an open letter, which was published on Zanodo and as well on the Society for Conservation Biology Europe section website so you can read that with the answers to eight different arguments also in the marine environment. We had 6000 signatures, and we had many of these that were acting as multiplicators. They created a lot of media attention. We spoke to policymakers to NGOs, we delivered the argument. And it seems that it had the impact of many people changing their opinions, resulting in, at least we were not the only ones but we delivered the pressure which eventually led to a majority vote. The majority voted against 366 against 300. So the vote has passed, which sounds like a success, but in fact, two things should be watched. One is that 51% majority compared to 96% societal support that we need nature restoration is not a great success in my opinion, given that they are both societal and scientific support. So there's a gap between policymaking in our society. One thing is that many amendments were taken into the proposal during the voting, not only by the parliament but also by the council. Currently the trial negotiations are going on. And when we are examining the list of amendments that were put into the nature restoration law one can see that there was a destructive attempt to weaken the nature restoration law significantly. And the targets in articles four and five by completely deleting agriculture, farmland was completely deleted in article nine the entire article nine was deleted, but also they added an amendment, saying that the common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policies cannot be used as source of funding which is kind of shooting your own foot, because this is one of the easiest policies to tweak if you want to support the nature restoration law. And of course I will not go into the details of how many loopholes were introduced so that member states wouldn't need to do anything, including one in article 23 which will basically allow never to for this legislation to come into action at all, unless they address issues of food security which actually are based on misinformation. What's observed is that there's very low ambition among the parliament but also among many of the ministers, including ministers of the environment, showing very low ambition, which is really a shame given that it's very clear how much you can benefit from such legislation. I think in this sense, each of us can do something about that because not only scientists but in society, we have a unique power in understanding where information and evidence can be used to help people, bodies, organizations that are interested to know whether or to take a more informed decision. This of course means that we need to identify misinformation and be able to debunk it so in this sense, our letters for instance an instrument that could be used when you want to address claims which might be false or misunderstood. But this also requires us to understand the difference between complexity which is there uncertainty which is there and the lack of solutions we do have solutions if we want to and this requires a political and societal will. So in this, I could simply welcome everybody who thinks that they have this knowledge and understand it to foster such science policy or science societal interactions, where you think that we can improve the way our society responds to the current crisis. With this, I'd like to thank you for attention and invite a discussion. Thank you so much guy. We'll begin our discussion. Just before we get into sort of the other deeper questions. I was wondering if Hendrik you just give it a very quick definition of debunking and pre banking. And yeah, I also already responded to one question regarding pre bumping. So debunking I think is quite straightforward because basically just setting the record straight so basically saying this is wrong information is correct information there is actually a more or less scientifically proven way to do it the best way so in order to not make the misinformation too prominent because there was in the past a fear that if you if you based on scientific evidence that didn't fully hold up that if you repeat the misinformation that it might actually backfire that it might actually people to believe more in the misinformation afterwards. So there is basically the best way of first starting with the truth than just repeating the false claim very briefly the most important aspect then explaining why this false and providing background and finishing with the true information so that you give just the minimum room to the misinformation that it needs because it might always happen that if you if you repeat the misinformation it might actually if people didn't even know about this misinformation claim they might be introduced to it via the debunk. So in order to just make this very, very likely that people don't pick up the false narrative. debunking is to their difference a wide concept that different types of pre banks but basically debunking happens before people encounter a certain misinformation narrative so it's independent of a narrative. So basically just educating people how to spot misinformation. What do you have to look out in order to get a sense of is this reliable is this not reliable so have a look. Look out for the strategies that are being used so claiming this is proof that this is from these experts were super great are telling you that this is correct so there are certain strategies that are not always easy to spot. This is important important ingredient to be banking and there is a specific type of pre banking which is actually quite interesting because it draws on the analogy of inoculations of vaccination basically they refer to it as cognitive inoculation. People basically are exposed to a reduced dose of misinformation. And they're also made aware that misinformation is there so you're exposed to the threat like misinformation but they're given the necessary ingredients in order to defend themselves to build cognitive antibodies basically against misinformation. This is often being done in actually in game environments so there's a specific game in the Internet's like I'm how's it called go viral is one game or bad news. Basically, you're actually in this game, taking the perspective of someone who's spreading misinformation and via this you get a sense of okay this is this information. This is what the negative effects are. And via this you generate the antibodies that help you then later to to spot misinformation and to protect yourself against misinformation. And this is a very, there's a lot of research now occurring but it's a relatively young concept, but so far the evidence mostly shows that there is there is sort of effectiveness and also to a certain extent long term effectiveness. So that people get it did against this information, but certainly sort of panacea of course it's just one strategy of many. Thanks. Thanks for that. I just want to perhaps take a bit step, a more of a step into the conversation now. And just ask buddy what guy finished on and also one of the questions we've received from the guests is what is the role of scientists in approaching misinformation. And what limits are there misinformation is reduced quickly and spreads quickly. And even policymaking policy makers want solutions where scientists tend to move slowly with research to understand the certainties and even debugging takes time. So, how should scientists appreciate the role here and can scientists operate alone. Perhaps there's roots for collaboration. Perhaps guy could you start on that side. Yes. Thank you for this question actually there are quite a few questions which were asked at the same time so I'll try to answer several questions here. The first question is what is the role of science. I know when we're talking about misinformation and the example of the nature restoration law is a situation for which for me was relatively clear because this is misinformation within my field, meaning. I have the mandate as a knowledge producer to use the knowledge which I've produced through 20 years of research in debunking information so when I see that misinformation is being spread or this information is being spread actively in this case. I have the mandate to respond because this is my knowledge, meaning. If I know that this is wrong. I think I have the right to do so. And personally and this is a personal decision. I think I have also the responsibility to do that, because I'm being paid by public money to produce this knowledge. I also feel, and this is a feeling question that we might be wasting money and time investing so much money into projects that produce knowledge which is then ignored. So in this sense, of course, we are persons and we have to take our decisions as people as concerned citizens, but also very well informed ones. This is where things become blurred of whether this is an opinion of a person, or the opinion of an institution. In this case, I've taken the decision of taking an action as a person. In other cases, we've been taking decisions as institutions. But still, the issue is to stay on your comfort zone. At the moment I step out of my comfort zone and step into opinions which are not based on my knowledge, I step into being a citizen. And that's where 24 authors had to cooperate in debunking misinformation. I'm not a marine scientist and in fact when we started writing the response to the claims against the marine protection areas. I had to involve people who had the expertise on that and even some of the claims that I wrote were false, because I thought that marine protected areas can boost marine fisheries, for instance. But in fact, the situation is a bit more complex. And you have to make sure as scientists that you also reflect, I wouldn't call it diversity of opinion but the variance which exists in reality. If we fail to reflect uncertainties and variances, we are in the risk of becoming politicians or lobbyists and this is something we are not. In this sense, of course, I lobby for nature. In this sense, policymakers perceive me as a lobbyist. And I think this is not a problem because from a policy perspective this is completely okay. As a scientist I don't perceive myself as a lobbyist but as representing the laws of nature, because nature does not compromise. So political texts can be compromised but natural laws cannot willing to compromise with us. So my job here is to represent Mother Nature to represent biodiversity and ecosystem services, and make sure that policymakers are aware of their responsibility to take the inputs from science. And if they fail to do that, that's their responsibility and I feel that it's correct and necessary to put the facts on the table and say, well, you've spread this information, you should be aware that this is wrong. Now you can do whatever you can continue spreading that but be aware. I'm not going to bash anybody that's not my job, but this is misinformation. And if they are aware they still continue the same, then something went wrong. But I think nobody else can do a better job in debunking misinformation than those that have the evidence on the table. I have to still answer the one question which is very important about the speed of operation. That was one of the most stressful situations for me to produce the document that we produced. We actually managed to do that in about 10 days. That was a lot of work and very little sleep for many people. But this is indeed the difference between producing new knowledge, such as we need to monitor what is happening in reality, we need to learn about the complexities and resolve them versus knowledge synthesis. This is what also I did the center where I'm working on and what it are doing, which is to integrate the existing knowledge to process it and to deliver it onwards in this case since the knowledge is so well established. It didn't take us too much time because we know what is the background and we also knew that the misinformation comes from certain areas. So we had all the material ready from previous presentations, publications, etc. So here the task is knowledge synthesis in this sense and not knowledge production. This is important. Thank you. So, part of that really is building networks and collaborations. Not just to react to the moment but like preparing for this in a way in a way to have the knowledge ready to go off cost as cannot knowledge, having it from communicating it, but building networks seems to be like a key aspect of that. Can I add a small point to that? Just to support what he's saying there because that's actually a very important point. Also, it's very, very difficult for one, like for an individual scientist to debunk everything that's going on. Because there is even like fact checkers in the internet that have trouble to keep pace with all the misinformation narratives that have been put on the internet daily. I've been to Google event last week on fighting misinformation online. There's a whole industry revolving around that whose goal it is just to fight misinformation since 2016. When I was very, very young, there is so much need there and still they are being overwhelmed by everything that's going on, not just by the quantity but also of course the lack of financing that they have to deal with. Right, because they are often doing this because they're intrinsically motivated because they think it's their responsibility. And I think for scientists, if possible, and that also relates to this one point by the teacher scientists Lima on what about topics that where there is no scientific context, consensus that makes it extra difficult because I think and I can share two papers related to that. It's important, if possible for scientists to not engage as individuals but as groups that even if there's no 100% consensus which is ready the case to outline or to speak as a collective in order to evade this false consensus effect because we often have the situations. And it's the basic examples we have one person on a scientific show on the network show where that is pro environment that's a climate change. And yes, it is debate with one climate contrarian, even though the, the one researcher stands for 98% or 99 or 100% of researchers and the other for for miniscule percentage in order to evade these situations because the public is sensitive to this. I see one researcher arguing they're asking is it just one person, do they, does he speak or she speak for the whole field. So if possible, and there are also nowadays luckily technological help in order to find consensus, or to visualize consensus to visualize uncertainty in groups of scientists for example, I think that's very important point is sharing the two links. Thank you. Yeah, so just building on that point of, you need to find collaborators need to build on networks with other scientists potentially beyond that as well. The questions were touching upon perhaps more personal perspectives or reactions to engaging with this very fast moving political and scientific policies fear. I see perhaps. Well, fears of perhaps being seen as a activist perhaps. And how that might curtail your engagement with a topic. And also how your engagement topic, and there's a lot of people that who dispute information information, should it be worthwhile going towards them and do them or should scientists also try and get for the collaborators come in as well. Because I mean as a scientist you might want to kind of like maintain that idea of impartiality. But as guy says, you've got a science side of decisions inside but it's too difficult to keep them separate. So the question there is, you want to gauge misinformation but is there a limit you find from your personal experience of how much you can do, or do you just disregard it to a degree and engage as to your best of your ability. Yeah, I also see that indeed somebody was asking whether I fear for instance, being labeled an activist and this is a fear that I had until some years ago when I was really astonished about the amount of positive response to going outside and asking to policymakers calling them for action. And one thing that was really important for me and many colleagues that are happily cooperating with us, it's not just with me but with with a network of people is that we don't tell politicians what they should do, they should do their politics, but we offer help. So we do not, I wouldn't say ever but we are trying to avoid situations where we don't meet somebody so we did meet people from any aspects of the of the political range including the leaders, or some of the leaders that were willing to meet us of the attack on the and some members of the EPP did meet us and we were really astonished about the fact that that they have taken the efforts to talk to us and we simply ask okay what are your concerns and how can we help you. So we know and you know that it's misinformation and in fact we were really surprised that they actually apologized and said well, in fact, we do think that the company that is doing this campaign has gone a bit too far in simply lying, inventing stuff. And they acknowledge the fact that, of course, that's what they say when they talk to us but at least they acknowledge the fact that they went too far. And two hours later their campaign actually changed, which was a lot more difficult because it was of course much more sophisticated and new claims came in which were even more false. However, we did see some reflection on the topic. So I think first of all I would like to encourage anybody who thinks that being an activist is a bad word I think being active and being proactive is important because I don't think it makes more sense to let NGOs speak for us scientists rather I prefer to speak for my own science and stand for it, because this is an important science communication whereas if we deliver that to NGOs, environmental NGOs or farmers, I mean they are already having a certain opinion. And so the assumption is that they will deliver only what they want to deliver rather than the fine tuned understanding of science. So I think at least my experience personally was an incredible support from the scientific community. I mean I was criticized once in a while but I got a lot more positive responses. And of course I made sure that I continue being a scientist because otherwise I can produce further knowledge. So it's important to find the balance because science policy does take a lot of time and energy as well. Great, thank you Guy. Unfortunately we are opening our time, there's quite a short period of time unfortunately. However, I want to give both our panelists one quick final point to make. This is more about, practically, how should people engage? If you have one opinion in terms of how people should engage with misinformation, specifically science misinformation and the science policy sphere, how should they go about that, how should they engage with that process? And Jake, if you'd like to start with that. I think just basically before engaging, thinking about what might be the possible reason of the misinformation that has been shared. Of course, in the end it's guessing because you don't know about the other sites, persons, institutions, intentions, but just to take this into account that there are different reasons of why people share misinformation that it's often unclear why they share misinformation and then based on what you think is the main, what is the potential reason, look for a best response, and try to act not too direct, not too offensive, for lack of a better word, with more understanding in order to engage in constructive rather than discussion that is directly cut off by the other side. And Guy, if you could have your point as well. Yeah, I would make two points. One is that we are working with people. And although those that usually spread or produce misinformation or disinformation are doing that deliberately for some purposes, most people that share this misinformation are not aware of that. And being better informed and trying to understand what is the logic behind the misunderstanding from their side, and being empathetic with that is a starting point where you could actually bend the curve of their understanding of what is going wrong. And if you don't understand why they do that from first place you will not be able to help them out of this misconception I would say the second thing is not to work alone because the amount of fatigues you can experience is very, very rapidly overwhelming. We need to work together with others and share the efforts and understand that each of us can do something and all of us should stay on our comfort zone and our contribution to that makes makes a difference just like in democracy everybody that is going to vote believes that their vote has a meaning. And so if we vote for the better, then it means that we find our own way of contributing to do better. And addressing misinformation I think is really, really central towards changing and helping the transformations that need to happen fast. Thank you. Thank you both so a few key takeaways would be of course be critical of what you consume in the media and of course provide information, but when you engage with people to be a pathetic understanding of what a positioning. And also when you do engage with people and engage in political political processes, find your people find communities and build it collaboratively and don't work alone. Unfortunately, I have to close webinar now. Honestly, thank you once again to our panellists Hendrick and Guy. Thank you for our audience for attending this webinar recording will be uploaded on to the EG YouTube channel in one week for some of the time of recording. So if you want to watch again, please check out there. Otherwise, that's goodbye to me and have a great day.