Niels Stensen Fellowship Conference 2017 - Science in the Post Truth-Era
In 2017, the Niels Stensen Fellowship (NSF) hosted a conference around trust issues in knowledge transfer from academia to society. In our “post-truth-era”, this transfer faces many challenges.
This year the conference addressed the science community's challenges in communicating facts. Citizens increasingly wonder what and who to believe. Supposed facts may turn out to represent fake news. Can people still put their trust in science? Should academics change their ways to become more trusted?
At the conference, Niels Stensen Fellows, researchers and representatives of media, politics and universities discussed how they might deal with this new reality.
According to Dr. Sander van der Linden, assistant professor in Social Psychology and key note speaker at the conference, facts are important but by themselves aren't sufficient to convince people as long as misinformation is also present. Van der Linden researched why facts sometimes lose the battle with fake news. He used data and myths around climate change as an example. He also explored solutions and indicated that people can be inoculated against misinformation.
We asked Diederik Slot, RD for Porticus in Netherlands and the Niels Stensen Fellowship, why this topic matters. Diederik explained: For over 55 years, with the Niels Stensen Fellowship, the family has been supporting young academics in developing a wider world view and becoming more effective contributors to a better world. The condition for putting all this expertise and good-will to good use, is society's trust in academia and academics' skills in communicating with society. With this conference we provided a platform for Niels Stensen Fellows, researchers and representatives of media, politics and universities to discuss this highly important topic and make sure that academics remain in the top of trusted professions. We also organised a storytelling workshop for current fellows and alumni, to improve their skills in communicating research facts in a compelling and truthful way."