Potter Lecture – Featuring Kevin Elliott- Threading the Needle: Resisting Misinformation While Respecting Local Knowledge

About the event

The School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs is hosting the Potter Lecture featuring Kevin Elliott from Michigan State University.

Threading the Needle: Resisting Misinformation While Respecting Local Knowledge
In an era characterized by social media and artificial intelligence, it is obvious that we need better ways to assess the reliability of all the information that we receive. On one hand, we are awash in misinformation that can have significant harmful consequences. On the other hand, experts are not always correct, and there are numerous cases where non-specialists with their own “local knowledge” have successfully challenged or improved on experts’ claims. This talk suggests that insights from philosophy can equip us to handle this tension in more sophisticated ways. Specifically, philosophical scholarship on the ways that scientific research is value-laden can help us find ways to respect the insights of experts while also being open to the lived experiences of non-specialists. Using examples from scientific research on public and environmental health, the talk will show how we can potentially alleviate disputes between specialists and non-specialists and develop better goals for science communication by carefully attending to the roles that values play in science.