An explosion of misinformation and disinformation have weakened public deliberation and undermined confidence in science, even as the world faces interconnecting crises such as war, climate change, and the pandemic and other health emergencies. To take on this “misinfodemic,” the Nobel Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences hosted the Nobel Prize Summit Truth, Trust and Hope, bringing together Nobel Prize laureates, researchers, policymakers, and citizens for an in-depth exploration of how to combat misinformation and build trust in science, scientists, and the institutions they serve.  

Held in Washington, D.C., and virtually, the three-day summit in May attracted more than 700 in-person attendees and over 10,000 online participants from more than 70 countries as experts across a range of fields offered insights on the impacts of misinformation and disinformation and proposals for how to combat them.  

Over the course of the summit, attendees heard from esteemed speakers such as Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa, who discussed her 10-point plan for combating disinformation and supporting journalism; U.N. Undersecretary for Global Communications Melissa Fleming, who spoke about the U.N.’s efforts to create a central capacity to monitor misinformation and disinformation; and technology ethicist Tristan Harris, who pointed to the need to upgrade society’s institutions to better address long-term cumulative harms from technology. In addition, the summit highlighted several new initiatives and ideas that will be tried and tested in the months ahead.  

Speeding research on solutions 

The summit was the launching ground for the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE), a new global science organization committed to providing actionable scientific knowledge about threats to the world’s information environment. The organization — which was conceived in 2021 during a breakout session at the first Nobel Prize Summit organized by NAS and the Nobel Foundation — is bringing together researchers from around the world and across disciplines to analyze systems of information manipulation and bias, provide neutral assessments on the condition of the global information environment, and evaluate policy solutions for addressing threats to it.  

The group has some 200 research scientists from 55 countries in its ranks, said Sheldon Himelfarb, president and CEO of PeaceTech Lab, during the 2023 summit. And it is already producing outcomes. The IPIE did a meta-analysis of over 4,000 scholarly papers about potential solutions, and it found that two measures have consistent positive effects: Flagging content before users go down the rabbit hole into misinformation, and providing the corrections — accurate information — at the moment the user encounters misinformation.  

“These are the two most likely operational changes that we could make to social media to improve public understanding of key issues,” said Oxford University professor Philip Howard. The IPIE plans to release soon the results of a global survey of experts about pressing areas for policy action and further research. 

In addition, spurred by the summit, the Digital Public Goods Alliance and the United Nations Development Programme teamed up to issue a global call for open-source solutions to combating misinformation and protecting information integrity. After receiving close to 100 submissions, nine were selected to present at the summit. The solutions — submitted from Kenya, France, Brazil, India, and other countries — focused on issues such as combating deepfakes, analyzing online news media, verifying crowdsourced data, and monitoring tech companies’ legal terms and their impact on users.  

Building critical-thinking skills 

Another new initiative introduced at the summit will focus on strengthening young people’s ability to recognize reliable information and understand how science works to develop it. Scientific Thinking for All: A Toolkit is a new curriculum that offers K-12 students a set of cognitive strategies to navigate real-world issues and to support the development of skills in reasoning and collaboration. 

“The collection of approaches to how we can think about problems — the critical thinking, the scientific thinking … we can teach them at all ages,” said 2011 Nobel physics laureate Saul Perlmutter, who led the development of the toolkit. “These are the things that will allow you to ask questions about the world in any area and to make judgments when you are coming across new ideas that you’ll be teaching yourself on the web over your lifetime.”  

The course was originally envisioned by Perlmutter, together with his colleagues in the social sciences and philosophy, as an offering for undergraduates at the University of California, Berkeley. UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science is now adapting the college course to suit a younger audience — an initiative being carried out in cooperation with Nobel Prize Outreach. K-12 teachers have been testing the course this year, and more are currently being recruited to participate in field tests.  

Summit attendees also learned about the Smithsonian Science Education Center’s collaborative action research program for high school students focused on sustainability and misinformation. Youth from Argentina, Mexico, South Korea, Mexico, and other countries worked with Nobel Prize laureates and other scientists over the course of three months, culminating in video presentations that were presented during the summit. 

Fostering public deliberation 

Multiple speakers at the summit pointed out that public policies governing misinformation need to be guided by the public’s values. To that end, the summit included an experiment in “deliberative polling” — a method that could potentially be used to understand public views about online misinformation and use them as input on policy decisions.  

In an online session during the summit, over 650 participants from 74 countries joined small group discussions about the pros and cons of various proposals to improve the information environment and counteract misinformation. For example, should social media platforms limit the amount of content that is targeted to individual users based on their past behavior and interests? Should platforms make their data available to researchers and journalists, so that the risks and benefits of social media use can be studied more easily? 

The participants deliberated in groups of eight to 12 using a special online platform, taking turns speaking, and they also had a chance to ask questions of subject-matter experts from academia, government, and industry. Participants were polled before and after their deliberations at the summit. While the participants were not a random sample — which limits the conclusions that can be drawn from the polling — the experiment demonstrated how the approach could be used to understand the public’s values and enable people to learn from both experts and other citizens.  

“Deliberation, we’ve shown in controlled experiments, reduces extreme partisan polarization and opens up people to listening to the other side,” said James Fishkin of Stanford’s Deliberative Democracy Lab, which ran the exercise. “In that manner, it corrects misinformation and disinformation, and it cools the temperature in the conversation so that people actually can come to informed conclusions.”

Insights From Summit Leaders

We asked the leaders of the institutions that hosted the recent Nobel Prize Summit “Truth, Trust and Hope” — Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Vidar Helgesen, executive director of the Nobel Foundation — to share their thoughts on the experience and how they hope the summit inspires future action.  

As you listened to and participated in the summit discussions, what did you learn that has changed the way you think about disinformation and trust in science? 

Vidar Helgesen: The summit made me more aware that trust in science cannot depend on scientists telling people to have trust in science. Scientists need to accept that communication is a distinct profession and skill set which needs to be applied to scientific findings also. We need to start where people are in their daily lives and demonstrate why science and evidence-based decision-making matters right there. ‘Science says CO2 emissions produce global warming’ is less convincing to many than ‘How come flooding of homes in this area occurs much more often than before?’  

Marcia McNutt: The public is interested in people and their stories. One of the more effective examples of this was when the NIH highlighted the contributions of a young African American researcher, Kizzmekia Corbett, to the development of the COVID RNA vaccine. They told the story of how she has an elderly grandfather in North Carolina, and wanted to protect him from a pandemic that was unduly impacting the old and the African American population. I imagine people reading her story would think, ‘If her motivation for this work is to save the life of her dear grandpa, this must be a trustworthy vaccine.’ People tend to build trust within the groups to which they belong — neighborhoods, churches, schools, and sports activities.  

Now that the summit has concluded, what gives you hope about the future and our ability to tackle misinformation and disinformation?  

Helgesen: Science itself — when communicated wisely! At the summit, we were presented with emerging scientific findings of what works in fighting online disinformation. I was also impressed by the examples of civil society mobilization for truth. The world was taken aback by the onset of disinformation, but humanity is getting better at fighting back. It will be a continuous battle, though.  

McNutt: There were many examples of hope shared during this summit. For example, science is all about inspiring a better future through discovery. We heard about coursework that trains students in the art of being more skeptical consumers of messages they read. And we heard about the work of brave journalists taking a stand against misinformation, particularly when [it is] state sponsored. We learned at the summit that inspiration is one of the few messages that spreads as quickly as misinformation and disinformation.  

How do you think the Nobel Prize Summits can encourage forward-looking solutions to big societal problems like misinformation and disinformation?  

McNutt: The Nobel Prize Summits are extraordinary in their reach and in the caliber of experts they attract to solve thorny problems, such as climate change (the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit Our Planet, Our Future) and misinformation and disinformation (the most recent summit). By concluding the discussions with the solutions and outreach day, dedicated researchers helped propagate promising solutions. Furthermore, by partnering with the National Academy of Sciences, the talented team of expert staff of the U.S. National Academies can follow up with initiatives to minimize the impact of misinformation.  

Helgesen: The Nobel Prize is a symbol of how we have it within ourselves to change the course of history. Nobel laureates have done just that, whether in science, peace, or culture. The Nobel Foundation does not itself promote particular initiatives, but when we organize events like this, with Nobel laureates at the center, we are delighted that various stakeholders are inspired to launch initiatives with the ambition to change things. We saw that happen in a really meaningful way at the Nobel Prize Summit.