The Grey Area: engaging with scientific uncertainty in online spaces

Join Demos, in partnership with the group Challenging Pseudoscience at the Royal Institution, for a panel event to discuss how to engage with the fact of scientific uncertainty when tackling misinformation.

We’ll discuss how we, as a society, do and should engage with scientific information and the fact of scientific uncertainty: in particular, what this means for what healthy conversations in online environments about scientifically uncertain issues look like.

We’ll look at how different groups – citizens, media, scientists, policymakers – think about and engage with concepts like scientific fact’ and ‘scientific uncertainty’. We’ll also explore the ways scientific uncertainty interacts online – where it is discussed in a healthy, robust and respectful way, and where it can lead to conspiracising and hate, and what needs to change about how we engage with scientific uncertainty in the public sphere.

Speakers include:

• Bejay Mulenga, Executive Director, The Student View
• Will Moy, CEO, Full Fact
• Alex O’Brien, Vice Chair, The Association of British Science Writers
• Ellen Judson, Head of CASM, Demos (chair)

The event will also be livestreamed and recorded.

Doors will open at 5:30pm, with the panel starting at 6pm. Drinks will be provided.

This event has now passed. You can watch the recording here.