Today’s episode of TL;DR Shorts once again features British science journalist, author, and broadcaster Angela Saini, who is best known for her work exploring the intersections of science, gender, race, and society. In this episode Angela reflects on the role of science communication in the COVID-19 pandemic and how accessing research information should be done with sceptical caution, to avoid the spread of misinformation and disinformation.
Angela also reflects on the role of the internet in democratising access to research information. While the use of technology to share research is a positive development, Angela reminds us that all information encountered must be done so with a healthy dose of scepticism to avoid consuming and propagating inadvertent misinformation or deliberate disinformation.
Angela discusses her role as founder and chair of the Challenging Pseudoscience research group under the Royal Institution. Through their research, they have learned that this is not so much down to a lack of access to robust research, but rather a challenge of confirmation bias. If someone reads an article without checking their own preconceptions or biases, they will cherry-pick elements of that research to suit their narrative. Reflecting on one of our previous TL;DR Shorts from Rodney Mullen who advocates for a broader range of minds being involved in research, mitigating against confirmation bias is certainly one more factor to add to the list of reasons why we must diversity our research community.
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