Taste of Science

The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked media coverage about science in a way never seen before. It also highlighted that accurate, evidence-based reporting is essential when dealing with a rapidly-circulating virus or building public trust on treatments and vaccines. In her keynote, she looks at how the research community is responding to the huge rise of misinformation, and how we can take lessons from humanities and social sciences to combat it.

Jen Schwartz is a senior features editor at Scientific American who produces stories on how society is adapting—or not—to a rapidly changing world. During the pandemic she has written about the anguish of uncertainty, from the trauma of healthcare workers to the legacy of scientific racism to what it’s like to create disinformation as a chaos-maker. She co-led the magazine’s 2019 special issue, “Truth, Lies & Uncertainty,” and wrote about information warfare. Her work on climate adaptation won the 2019 National Association of Science Writers "Science and Society" award. Jen previously worked at Popular Science, GQ, New York, Outside, Self, and The Boston Globe.

Language: English

Can insufficient policies lead to the alleged abuse of power? When independent ethical structures and processes are missing or weak, practices of abuse, misconduct and cover-ups can easily arise. Even organizations specializing in good governance are no exception, as illustrated by this case study on Transparency International (TI). Cobus de Swardt’s talk will focus on his book, Silencing a Whistleblower, which chronicles an ethical breakdown over a 5-year period, which aptly reveals the snowball effect that ethical weaknesses can create over time and the emotional warfare that whistleblowers are typically subjected to.

Cobus de Swardt has served as Managing Director of Transparency International for ten years. Before that, as an academic at universities on four continents. Throughout his career he has sought to combine his professional expertise with social activism; his TEDx speech is an example. As an activist, he was imprisoned in South Africa under the Apartheid Detention laws.

Language: English