How the infoxes forced scientists to review their communication

• Since the beginning of the health crisis linked to Covid-19, the propagators of false scientific information have been having a great time on social networks.
• To combat this phenomenon, scientific institutions are mobilizing more and more to offer the general public clear and verified information.
• By trying to popularize their research methods as well as possible, scientists are thus trying to establish a link with the population and strengthen their beliefs in science.

On this morning of March 18, it's the battle of the Pasteur Institute. While the scientists at this Paris-based establishment, renowned worldwide for its work on emerging viruses, are working on Covid-19 and the manufacture of a vaccine, its members discover, taken aback, a video circulating on the networks socialists who accuse of having created the new coronavirus from scratch.

"The video was posted during the night and, when we learned of it, at 8 am, it had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times and replicated on many supports," Professor Jean remembers for 20 minutes. -François Chambon, director of communication and patronage of the Pasteur Institute. It went very, very quickly. It's incredible. False information, I see a lot of it circulating, for a long time. But never at this speed. We had to react very quickly. "

No, the Covid-19 was not patented by the Institut Pasteur in 2004 https://t.co/yGiRkLeVHk

When we attack him, Pasteur counter-attacks

Then begins a real race against the clock. "Given the seriousness of the statement, which was a real accusation against the Pasteur Institute, and the epidemic context in which we were, there was a very strong mobilization to respond, continues Jean-François Chambon. All the com 'teams spent the whole day on this, it also mobilized scientists who, instead of continuing their research, had to give their time to provide us with the data necessary to refute the accusations. On arrival, we produced our responses very quickly on our many communication media. "

An official denial, entitled “NO, the coronavirus was not created in the laboratory! », Is published on the institute's website, along with explanations and data to extinguish the fire. A video is also recorded with the former scientific director of Pasteur, as if to respond to the “fake news” with the same weapons as their authors of the disinformation. At the same time, the Paster Institute responds to requests from fact-checking services from various media, including 20 Minutes , with the aim of undermining this theory.

⁉ FAKE NEWS: no, @ institutpasteur did not invent the virus responsible for # COVID19! Our explanations. ⁉

➡️ https://t.co/EPtKcdlsmZ pic.twitter.com/7yCpeE7aG2

The results of this counter-offensive are not long in coming. Jean-François Chambon always: "We have gradually seen opinions on social networks change: initially very suspicious [of the Pasteur Institute], the negative comments have given way to rebuttal "fake news" and, at the end of the day, it was largely balanced. The video in question was almost 3 million views in the evening and, for our part, we evaluated at around 5 million the number of views of our rebuttal (Institut Pasteur and denied by fact-checking media services included) "

A tedious but necessary "battle of influence"

Since the start of the global health crisis, this real "battle of influence" between science and "infox", says Professor Chambon, has become almost daily for the scientific community, which has to deal with a lot of fake news every day more important. This is not without causing problems. "Doubt is something essential to the scientific approach," breathes Jean-Gabriel Gansacia, head of the ethics committee of the CNRS, who recently examined the question of false information. But there, it turns against us. That puts us in a delicate situation since we want to be able to keep this capacity to open up to any new hypothesis. Except that here, we are confronted with purely false things ... It is all the more complicated to combat as the harmful effects of an infox remain even if we demonstrate that it is false. "

In this period of pandemic and doubts, people want "definitive and short-term answers", explains Mathias Girel, project manager at the Institute of Advanced Studies for Science and Technology and researcher at Paris University -I. Problem, the timescale of scientific research is not compatible with this need to know everything, right away. “We are extremely uncomfortable with this phenomenon, admits Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, from the CNRS. In science, the time for explanation is quite long. Research introduces slowness, heaviness and complexity. We don't have the right role, in this very specific case! "

An awareness of the scientific community

“These theses are nourished by a sort of collective unconscious driven by fear and distrust. If this phenomenon spreads so quickly, it is also because it responds to a social demand, to an aspiration of a part of the population, engages the communication director of Pasteur. It is therefore important to understand what the false news is echoing, and then to better respond to it. It is difficult, as a scientist, to be content to say "They are ignorant, they do not understand anything." It puts us in a position of knowing, of moral superiority which is very badly accepted today. We have to go further to try to clear things out and we must do so with modesty. "

“Over the past 20 years, we have realized that a distance between science and the general public has grown. The image of the scientist in his ivory tower, subject to " Publish or Perish ", is real. This one does not always know how to address the general public ", notes as such Chérifa Boukacem-Zeghmouri, professor in Information and Communication Science at Claude-Bernard University (Lyon-I) and specialist digital scientific communication methods. "But scientific institutions have become aware of the need to" translate "the contributions of science in order to disseminate them to society," she adds. They try to reconnect with the general public without being in educational discourse, through scientific and technical culture. "

⚡️ The CNRS is mobilizing to give you reliable scientific information on the #coronavirus pandemic (# COVID19) and to fight #FakeNews. Stay informed of all the news related to the subject 👉 https://t.co/pgA0hqRuy8https://t.co/ae21dA6zIh

An “appetite” for scientific decryption

This is the bet that, in addition to the Pasteur Institute, the CNRS and Inserm. If these two public institutions dedicated to research have not been directly targeted by a news report, they are aware of the need for a link with the general public. At CNRS, this involves the creation of a series of podcasts to explain the crisis, or even through publications in its newspaper. At Inserm, the communications team is enriching its website with news on research around the Covid-19, as well as texts deciphering current issues related to the virus.

The Inserm team, including that of the CNRS, clearly noted the public's “appetite” for these publications, underlines Priscille Rivière, deputy director of communication. Visits to its website have doubled. On that of the CNRS, they went from 338,000 in March to 600,000 in April.

A “social issue”

The three institutions recognize the importance of this communication. "It has always been one of our priorities, and it is even more essential for this crisis," underlines Priscille Rivière. Stressing that "research is part of the response to the epidemic, whether through treatment or a vaccine", the official indicates that the objective is to show "science being done, for the benefit of citizens" , adds the manager.

"This is an extremely important societal issue: working towards the democratization of knowledge and skills," abounds Jean-François Chambon. The task is immense, but it must be done. Scientists have a responsibility to publicize what they do and what is at stake in what they do. "

"The scientific method no longer has an authority today which makes it possible to establish the truth and the truth"

However, is it really the role of these institutions to respond to information or to do this popularization work? "As soon as we consider that science shapes society, we can completely consider that it must communicate with society on the results it will produce, analyzes Mikaël Chambru, researcher on scientific communication at the university from Grenoble-Alpes. The institutions cannot do without this work of popularization, of scientific mediation. "

This is all the more so since "the scientific method no longer has an authority today which makes it possible to establish truth and truth, if it has always had it," adds the researcher. Scientific institutions are not isolated from society, they are caught in perpetual tension to explain the world as it is. Science competes with other lines of reading. Reading lines that sometimes even upset these institutions in their scientific legitimacy.

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