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Selected Posters
Thanks to everyone who submitted a poster for consideration. We had an incredibly diverse selection of innovative ideas to choose from, and believe the group reflects a broad array of ideas that use technology to enhance science communication and policy.
Fallacy Bingo
Karen Ingram, Wieke Betten
Karen Ingram & Associates and Synbio LEAP
Do you have a hard time identifying when a belief system is built on fallacious constructs? Us, too. In order to help society understand the impact of fallacies on our thinking, CoLab Futures made a game, Fallacy Bingo.
Why? Fallacies tend to shut down arguments preemptively, or distract from the core issue of an argument. Consequently, they work to build division between parties, and create fragmenting. In this age, it's a frequent occurrence. Calling fallacies out can help us move past them and address core issues. The goal of Fallacy Bingo is essentially, to provide the tools of awareness, and get past the bullshit. Spot, explain and properly identify some of the most common fallacies used in politics, media, business, marketing, and social media today.
Learn more: https://www.colabfutures.com/fallacybingo
Putting Climate Action in our Hands and Hearts
Curt Newton
Climate Interactive with the MIT Sloan School of Management Sustainability Initiative and the Climate Change Initiative at University of Massachusetts - Lowell
To head off the mounting catastrophic effects of climate change, we know that dramatic and rapid systemic changes are needed. But the facts alone, and scientists’ increasingly sounding the alarm, haven’t spurred us anywhere near to sufficient action. Climate Interactive has developed an engaging and trusted way for thought leaders, policy makers, and citizens to explore what it will actually take to achieve our climate goals. We’ll show how En-ROADS, a new, powerful, and easy-to-use climate simulator, and its companion role-playing negotiation game and deep-dive workshop activities, build understanding of what specific changes in energy, land use, consumption, agriculture, and other policies can actually get us there.
Learn more: https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/en-roads/
XvY: Augmented, Targeted, and Amplified Peer Review for Health Science
Noah Haber
Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford University (METRICS)
The pathway from research generation to consumption is a complex process which can yield inaccurate, overstated, and/or inappropriately selected health science at every step along the way, from academia to social and traditional media. XvY is designed bolster science’s self-righting mechanisms, extend them into public discourse and decision-making, and help navigate its future though refreshing, augmenting, and amplifying a very old idea in science: peer review. We are starting with one of the central issues in health science: causal inference. Strong causal inference is always hard, as is figuring out whether studies actually could find that some X actually causes some health Y. Unfortunately, correlation is often mistaken as causation (even in academia), resulting in perpetual misleading studies and translation. That leads to people making bad decisions from bad information and deep societal issues with scientific and media credibility, deserved or not.
The idea has four components, each of which is designed and integrated in a way that strengthens and feeds the other parts. Part 1) is large scale targeted scientific review at all points from journal publication to consumption. Part 2) uses that review data to develop and augment review tools and processes to be more effective, less costly, faster, and more accessible. Part 3) identifies mechanisms and processes which impact research strength, translation, and utilization. Finally, Part 4) takes the enhanced review tools and strategies, and deploys them en masse across scientific journals, media, and social media. The review data in turn plug into existing and emerging credibility engines.
Learn more: https://www.metacausal.com/xvy/
FACT vs. FICTION
Hyunjung Kim, Yujin Lee, Myeongseong Kim
Dept. of Industrial Design, KAIST
FACT vs. FICTION is a 2.5-dimensional origami letter sculpture that can be read differently depending on the direction of the view. Each origami pyramid is a physical representation of a pixel, the smallest visible element that we use in digital communication. The letter sculpture made of 115 physical pixels represents a forest of texts in the current online media. When you first face the sculpture from the front, you encounter the confusion – blurred lines between FACT and FICTION. However, if you look at the sculpture carefully on the right side, you can distinguish the word “FACT”. On the opposite side, you only see “FICTION”. Different perspectives come to very different results.
FACT vs. FICTION is based on selective exposure, a theory that refers to individuals’ tendency to favor information which reinforces their pre-existing views while avoiding contradictory information. Whether a news item, either fact or fiction, is accepted as true by a user may be strongly affected by social norms or by how much it coheres with the user’s system of beliefs. Even for scientific news, people mostly tend to select and share content related to a specific narrative and to ignore the rest.
FACT vs. FICTION invites us to confront the challenges of discerning the fact from fiction in the current online media. We have to take the right stance to find the fact, and this is the first step for #SpreadingFacts.
The MIT CommKit: Communication Resources for Engineers, by Engineers
Diana Chien, Ph.D., Deanna Montgomery, Ph.D., Caitlin Stier
MIT School of Engineering Communication Lab
The MIT School of Engineering Communication Lab is an educational organization that aims to empower scientists and engineers to effectively communicate their own work. We use a peer-to-peer model – training MIT graduate students and postdocs as communication coaches – to build communication resources and experiences that reflect the practical, field-specific expectations of communication within different STEM disciplines. In order to share our strategies with the scientific community at large, we created the CommKit: a free, online collection of guides to STEM communication needs. Topics range from academic articles and figures, to science policy communications, to effective coding as informed by a communication perspective. For each of these tasks, the CommKit illustrates high-level communication strategies, practical tips, and real-world examples – all customized for each of several STEM disciplines.
Since its launch in 2016, the CommKit has received tens of thousands of hits per month, and received enthusiastic feedback from a global audience. Good communication is both a professional necessity and a social responsibility for scientists and engineers; we aim for the CommKit to provide STEM trainees everywhere with opportunities to learn and practice universal communication skills in the context of specific tasks that will also further their own careers.
Learn more: https://mitcommlab.mit.edu/find-comm-labs/#explorecommkit
Illustrating AI
Catherine Ahearn, Ph.D.
PubPub, Knowledge Futures Group
The MIT Press, the Knowledge Futures Group, and the Harvard Data Science Initiative partnered with Brooklyn-based web development firm Accurat to produce several data visualizations for issue 1 of the Harvard Data Science Review.
We'll demonstrate how these visualizations operate alongside and in the service of the content. Using the effective use of data visualizations in HDSR as an example, we'll also discuss how interactive media can drive reader understanding and engagement, serving as an additional way for researchers to communicate their work to a wider audience. Related topics include defining and quantifying effective reader engagement and reach, as well as publishing for use in classrooms.
Learn more: https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/
Interactive Poster Session
Are you working on innovative technologies to improve science communication, science policy, or public understanding of science? Submit your work to the interactive poster session of the #SpreadingFacts conference for a chance to present your project and receive complimentary conference tickets.
What We’re Looking For
Advances in science and technology are our strongest ammunition in facing urgent global challenges. But in order to create needed political and behavioral change, research must be communicated in a way that increases public understanding and moves people and institutions to action.
We’re looking for students, researchers, and organizations working on applying technology, broadly defined, to the problem of science communication in innovative ways. We are particularly interested in projects that contain an interactive or demo-able component — interactive experiences, online tools, videos, etc.
Selected posters will present their projects to conference participants on interactive screens during a lunchtime poster session, and will receive complimentary tickets to attend the day-long conference.
How To Submit & Criteria
Create a new Pub using the button below
In your Pub, include the following items:
Your name, email address, and affiliation
A brief biography
The names of any collaborators and their roles in the project
A title for your poster
A brief description of your project (no longer than 250 words)
Link to, embed, or upload your poster — a poster can be an image, video, presentation, interactive, online demo, etc.
If your poster is an interactive or demo, include brief written or video instructions describing how to use it so that we can fully assess it for inclusion in the poster session
Affirmation that you (and any collaborators who will join) can attend the conference in-person in Cambridge, MA on December 3, 2019
Key Dates & Locations
November 3, 2019: Poster submission deadline at 11:59pm EST
November 11, 2019: Poster submission deadline extended!
November 11-15, 2019: Winners notified and invited to attend
December 3, 2019: Conference takes place in Cambridge, MA
Submitters must be able to attend the conference in-person. We are unable to offer budget for travel or lodging.
FAQ
Q: Who is eligible to submit a poster?
A: This is an open call and anyone is welcome to submit a poster.
Q: How many slots are available?
A: There are six poster slots available.
Q: Can I submit more than one poster?
A: No. Due to limited time and resources, we will be accepting one poster per applicant. If an applicant submits more than one poster, we will read and consider the first one submitted.
Q: What is the deadline for poster submissions?
A: The deadline for proposals is November 3, 2019 at 12:59pm EST.
Q: Can I submit my poster in a language other than English?
A: No. Unfortunately, we can review posters written only in English.
Q: Will you consider collaborative posters?
A: Yes. However, conference slots are limited and we reserve the right to extend an invitation only to the submitting author.
Q: Do I have to submit an interactive or demo?
A: No. Your poster can be a still image demonstrating your project. However, we will give preference to posters that are interactive or have a multimedia or demo-able component.
Q: When will you notify submitters that they have been accepted?
A: Accepted posters will be notified on November 11, 2019.
Q: What happens if my posters is selected?
A: You will be invited to present your poster in Cambridge, MA on December 3, 2019. Authors of selected posters will have until November 15, 2019 to confirm their attendance.
Q: Where is #SpreadingFacts?
A: #SpreadingFacts will be held at the MIT Samberg Conference Center in Cambridge, MA.
Q: If my poster is selected, will #SpreadingFacts provide funding for travel or accommodations?
A: No. Submitters will be expected to provide their own funds for travel and accommodations.
Q: Who will be evaluating the submitted posters?
A: The posters will be evaluated by editors, academics, and technologists from the conference organizers — the MIT Press, the MIT Technology Review, and the Knowledge Futures Group.
Q: How can I share news about this session with others?
A: Please spread the word about the session by linking to this page (https://spreadingfacts.pubpub.org/poster-session) when posting on social media.
Q: Who can I contact if I have a question about or issue with my submission?
A: Please contact Gabriel Stein, Knowledge Futures Group, at [email protected].
Terms
By submitting, you grant #SpreadingFacts and its partners a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to publish, broadcast (across all media), and post the poster content (including any interactives or multimedia) and poster description on the conference website, social media channels, and any other platforms existing or yet to be envisaged, together with the name, bio, and affiliation of the submitter and any named collaborators.
We will not use any information submitted for any purpose other than evaluating your submission, in accordance with our privacy policy. We are not liable for any damage, loss, or disappointment suffered as a result of your taking part or not being able to take part in this submission. In the event of unforeseen circumstances, we may alter, amend, or foreclose the session without prior notice. We reserve the right to change these terms at any time.
