Hello there… Thomas Nygren Online source evaluation important in wartime

ONLINE SOURCE EVALUATION IN WARTIME

Thomas Nygren, member of the EU’s expert group on fake news and online disinformation and professor at the Department of Education.

What’s your view on the situation that has arisen with the war in Ukraine?

“One should be aware that there is a propaganda war going on where lies and manipulations are rampant. The tone on social media is quite strident and many people are making pronouncements and publishing posts on matters that they don’t themselves have any knowledge about. Many of them do so, of course, out of a genuine desire to contribute and get involved.

“I personally carry with me that old saying about the fi rst victim of any war being the truth. This saying is just as relevant today, and we must expect an especially large amount of fake news at this point. For propaganda reasons, lies are spread as part of waging the information war and it is diffi cult to corroborate information in the prevailing situation.” How do you think one should deal with the fl ow of information about the situation in Ukraine?

“You need to keep a cool head and be vigilant, even though that is almost inhuman in view of what is happening. The basic questions that need to be asked are who is behind the information, and what is its purpose. Is it factual information or is it intended to make you react, feel or do something? However, in this situation, that is especially diffi cult because it’s important to get involved, even though there is also a lot of information that has yet to be corroborated.” Are there any quick and easy methods for determining what is true?

“There are powerful tools and methods for investigating the veracity of the content in moving images, still images and information that are used by journalists, among others. But it takes considerable time and requires a lot of resources, and we ordinary folk mainly need others to do that for us. We need to generally rely on channels that do their job, and to be more alert than usual when it comes to direct reporting via social media.” But shouldn’t we be used to evaluating the sources of online content ourselves?

“Unfortunately, repeated studies have shown that we are not as good at evaluating online sources as we think we are. One problem is that we don’t get any feedback from social media. When we have believed something that turns out to be untrue, we don’t receive any correction that might help us see our own limitations.”

/ ANDERS BERNDT

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES Assessment algorithms that are trained on health data, including ECGs.

AI to provide safer emergency care

MEDICINE Artifi cial intelligence can improve safety and effi ciency in emergency departments. This is the hypothesis behind Johan Sundström’s research project, which has been awarded a grant from the European Research Council (ERC). The researchers will develop an AI-based clinical decision support system for emergency doctors.

Emergency doctors must make quick life-changing decisions in a chaotic environment, based on limited information. There are considerable risks of missing important diagnoses, or of patients experiencing unnecessary examinations, waiting times and hospital admissions. There fore, there is great potential for AI-based clinical decision support systems, says Johan Sundström, cardiologist and professor of epidemiology.

“Artifi cial intelligence (AI) has a great ability to recognise patterns by learning from millions more patients than an individual doctor meets in an entire career.”

The researchers will develop AI-driven risk assessment algorithms that are trained on health data from up to six million patient visits to emergency departments. This includes ECGs, reasons for visits, vital signs, past medical history and self-reported symptoms.

“This type of data is suitable for artifi cial intelligence, which is extremely good at pattern recognition. In particular, machines have the upper hand when it comes to rapidly processing huge quantities of data,” Sundström explains.

Johan Sundström, cardiologist and Professor of Epidemiology. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt

PHOTO: NASA, ESA, BRIAN WELCH (JHU), DAN COE (STSCI) The star Earendel, which appears as a faint spot, lived for only a few million years before exploding in a powerful supernova.

28 billion light years away

ASTRONOMY As part of an international collaboration, researchers at the Department of Physics and Astronomy have succeeded in detecting what seems to be an individual star whose light was emitted from a region of space that is currently 28 billion light years away from us. This new discovery breaks all previous records in the identifi cation of individual stars from the early universe. The star that has now been observed comes from a time just 900 million years after the Big Bang, a time when the universe was only 7 per cent of its current age.

Traces of 33 different drugs

ENVIRONMENT Pharmaceutical drugs help us to live longer and healthier lives; however, their active substances can enter the environment through wastewater and, in the long term, lead to imbalances across entire ecosystems. In a new study of insects in the Fyris River, researchers at Uppsala University identifi ed traces of 33 different drugs.

“When combined, these substances can produce unexpected and enhanced effects which, as they reach further up the food chain, can also affect human beings. The impact of pharmaceutical drugs on the environment is a very real challenge for all of society,” says Emelie Sedvall, PhD student at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry.

Everyone knows the best argument you can put forward is a scientifi c one. So, people are trying to seem scientifi c by fabricating things and presenting them using scientifi c jargon.”

Dan Larhammar, Professor of Molecular Cell Biology and chair of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on the fi ght against pseudoscience in his science podcast.