Events and speakers

By Mariah Cox

What do CBD, climate change, flat earthers, and anti-vaxxers have in common? All are prevalent in the propagation of ‘fake news’ in science.

Truthful and accurate reporting is crucial in the field of journalism to create a well-informed society. You may have heard the term ‘fake news’ a time or two, but what does fake news really mean, what does it look like and how does it arise?

“It’s important for everybody, all journalists, and really all human beings to kind of have a better understanding of where some of this information went wrong to be able to identify stories that might sound real that are probably not,” said Sarah Shipley-Hiles, an MU journalism professor who chaired the fake news panel hosted by the Science Health and Environmental Journalism (SHEJ) club on Wed., April 3.

In short, fake news is pseudo-news that contains disinformation or falsities that deceive the public. This false information sparks distrust of the media and causes strong debate among members of opposing ideologies.

SHEJ president Madelyne Maag opened the discussion Wednesday with the flat earth conspiracy theory.

“Flat earth theory is one of the most popular and talked about conspiracy since the 1990s when it first surfaced and then it nearly died out,” Maag said.

The flat earth theory is the belief that instead of the earth being spherical, it is on a plane with a wall surrounding it. It nearly died out in the 1990s when its creator died. However, the theory resurfaced with the rise of the internet and social media.

Facebook provided a platform for those still believing in the theory to connect and spread their ideology. To put it into perspective, the group of 3,500 original believers has expanded to a Facebook following of roughly 200,000 people now.

“Social media has magnified the problem, but it is not the sole source of the problem,” Maag said.

Other platforms such as Netflix, Hulu and YouTube have brought the flat earth theory to light through videos and documentaries, and further spread its doctrine globally.

To get an understanding of why conspiracy believers thrive, two cognitive researchers from Texas Tech attended the first flat earth conference in Raleigh, NC in 2017. Landrum and Olshansky conducted interviews with 50 attendees to better understand their motivations for believing the theory. They found that people who believe one conspiracy theory are more susceptible to believing other conspiracy theories.

They also found of the people they interviewed, most of them became aware of the theory through YouTube. They reported watching 9/11 conspiracy videos and being led to flat earth conspiracy theory through YouTube’s autoplay function and recommended videos.

And there is no shortage of user-generated content with the rise of the internet. The problem lies in unchecked information and deceptive claims being perceived as fact.

“Because of that, it shows that journalists have an important duty to get the story right the first time,” Maag said.  “Those who are in charge of social media have a responsibility to make sure fake news and fake information is not given the light of day.”

The same problem presents in many science news topics, including rapid acceptance of Cannabidiol (CBD) oil as a natural ‘cure all’ despite not being approved by the FDA, anti-vaccination claims and misconceptions of climate change.

Anti-vaccination claims arose after British doctor Andrew Wakefield published a study in the Lancet suggesting a connection between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination to behavioral and developmental disorders in children. The study was later retracted as the study was not replicable by other researchers, thus invalidating its claims. Additionally, the study was funded by private interest groups who were against vaccine-producing companies.

“Jenny McCarthy went on Oprah, the Today Show and the View and talked about her own anecdotal experience of her son having autism so she claims that the vaccine for MMR led to that,” said Ashton Day, a graduate student at MU.

Because of the reach of these television shows as well as McCarthy’s following, among other causes, this belief was able to spread into public thought and encourage support for this stance.

The panel concluded that current journalistic reporting is doing a disservice to public perceptions of these issues.

“Unfortunately, the media played a big part in spreading the problem,” Shipley-Hiles said. “Journalists, in an attempt to be fair, cover these issues like a football game or a political battle. They just say these people say climate change is happening or not happening, you figure it out.”

Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

When Simine Vazire began teaching undergraduate research methods she focused on its difference from pseudo-science or nonscience, the value of the scientific method and the notion that science is self-correcting. However, it became harder for her to teach that lesson with a clear conscience as she began to grapple with issues of credibility and replicability in the field of psychology with her own research.

“Credibility is arguably the eye of the storm of the in the replication crisis. I didn’t call this the replication crisis in psychological science because that’s pretty controversial,” Vazire said.

Vazire, a psychology professor from UC Davis, focused on these issues Monday, Feb. 4, in Bond LSC, as part of the Evolution and Social Science series. The talk, “The Credibility Revolution in Psychology,” centered on the idea that each scientific field should engage in critical self-examination to detect errors in theories and to improve them.

Upon beginning her research, Vazire found the false discovery rate to be high because many published findings were difficult to replicate and when studies were replicated, the pattern of results was inconsistent.

“I’m not embarrassed that we got things wrong, I’m happy that we’re figuring things out to make it better,” Vazire said. “But how do we make it better? I think we humans are the bug. We are not designed to be universalists who are communal, open and transparent, who like to question each other and challenge each other and so on. I think the key question for scientists to ask is ‘how would I know if I was wrong?’”

One way to help solve the credibility issue, Vazire suggests, is transparency.

“The more transparent we are, the more likely it is our errors will be caught,” Vazire said.

That means documenting every aspect of a study, verifying the claims, and letting the data and materials be viewable for other scientists to test, according to Vazire. Although transparency is necessary for credibility, it does not guarantee it. Studies need quality data and strong methods to back up claims.

In order for the science community to operate under a self-correcting system, Vazire recommends following four norms: universalism of status, communality of findings, disinterestedness and organized skepticism.

“I think this is good news,” Vazire said. “We didn’t know we were doing something wrong and now that we know we can fix it.”

The problem is bigger than individuals, and the science community as a whole needs to be dedicated to producing solid, verifiable claims, she said.

Now, Vazire challenges her students to be transparent in their research instead of advocating that science is self-correcting.

“We should teach students that when they’re going into science, they’re agreeing to have their stuff checked, challenged and criticized by other people,” Vazire said. “But, also, they’re allowed to challenge and criticize other people.”

The Evolution and Social Science Speaker Series hosts presentations by scholars exploring evolutionary perspectives from an interdisciplinary framework. Speakers span the full spectrum of the sciences and the humanities, including biology, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, economics, history, philosophy, and literature.

The series is held in 572 Bond LSC and its schedule is at https://ess.missouri.edu/speaker-series/spring-2019.html.

Joint recruitment weekend welcomes prospective grad students to MU family

By Danielle Pycior | Bond LSC

As laughter and conversation began to fill the hall with the arrival of graduate students from across the country, new relationships began to form.

Entering its 10th year, the annual Graduate Life Sciences Joint Recruitment Weekend continues a unique recruitment tradition at the University of Missouri that has only grown with time.

Chris Pires, a Bond Life Sciences Center investigator, professor of biological sciences and associate dean for research in MU’s College of Arts and Science, has utilized the event every year as an opportunity to bring students together who wouldn’t otherwise meet. Though Pires plays a large role in recruitment, he acknowledges that giving students an opportunity to build relationships is crucial.

“They usually close the deal with each other and with the current students, I’m just throwing a party,” Pires said.

The weekend is a shared event between many programs across MU’s campus — biochemistry, biological sciences, the genetics area program, the informatics institute, molecular pathogenesis and therapeutics, plant sciences, the interdisciplinary plant group and the life sciences fellow-ship program —that come together to meet with students looking for research opportunities.

“It’s the largest group we’ve had to date, so that’s pretty exciting,” said Debbie Allen, MU coordinator of graduate initiatives.

Allen has organized this event since it began and says it’s important to show graduate students that MU is a community and not just a compilation of labs and offices.

“The most rewarding thing is when I see connections that start to be made, when I see the synergy between MU faculty and grad students and postdocs with the prospective students visiting our campus,” Allen said.

Pires is currently recruiting two students to join his research team. Both agreed that the weekend was greater than their expectations.

Michael Pisias from Sacramento State University said he hadn’t even thought about attending MU until he began speaking with Pires. After meeting, seeing the facilities and getting to know more of the MU community, Pisias said he could see a future here for himself.

“It’s a really nice community, I love that everyone is super friendly,” Pisias said. “Every single person I have interacted with has been nice and more than helpful, and this facility is amazing.”

Pires said the recruitment weekend is to show students what this campus is all about.

“Being a grad student isn’t just being a member of your department, but part of this larger community of graduate students across MU,” Pires said.

Shawn Thomas from the University of Georgia was roped in by Pires at a UGA conference. Thomas said they talked for hours about his research and Pires convinced him to come look at MU.

“Coming to this recruitment weekend was amazing. It was a lot more than I expected. All the collaboration and the openness with faculty and students seem really great. I think this would be a cool place to start my graduate studies,” Thomas said.

Though this weekend may not be all that it takes to convince a student to attend the university, it does show them what MU is all about.

“The present and future of science is teamwork,” Pires said, “These collaborative events really start the spirit of, ‘hey we’re going to work together.’”

By Mariah Cox | Bond LSC

Farmers, scientists and tree experts, from field to forest, will bring their work inside this Wednesday and Thursday to hear how research can improve all of their livelihoods.

The 10^th annual University of Missouri Center for Agroforestry Symposium is set to take place Jan. 30-31 at the Bond Life Sciences Center on the University of Missouri’s campus.

The two-day event will focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in the field of agroforestry and will feature keynote speakers Rodolphe Barrangou and Kelly Sexton.

“The annual Agroforestry Symposium is an opportunity to bring together leading researchers and practitioners to explore in-depth and showcase a compelling agroforestry-related theme,” said Gregory Ormsby Mori, Center for Agroforestry outreach coordinator.

The Symposium kicks off Wednesday evening with an introduction from Mark McIntosh, vice president for research and economic development for the UM System and vice chancellor for research at MU. The introduction will be followed up by the keynote speaker Rodolphe Barrangou, who will give a presentation titled “The CRISPR Craze: Entrepreneurial Lessons from a Disruptive Technology.”

Barrangou, an associate professor of food science at North Carolina State University, specializes in researching the biology and genetics of CRISPR-Cas immune systems in bacteria which defend against viruses. Barrangou focuses on using CRISPR technologies in his lab to vaccinate the bacteria used to produce cultured dairy products in an effort to prevent viruses that could destroy starter cultures.

The following day will begin with an introduction from Michael Gold, interim director for the Center for Agroforestry, and Christopher Daubert, dean of the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, will introduce keynote speaker Kelly Sexton.

Sexton, an associate vice president for research—technology transfer and innovation partnerships at the University of Michigan, will talk about “The Transformative Power of Research and Technology Commercialization.” She promotes innovation and intellectual property development programs at her university as well as engagement with businesses and government organizations locally and globally.

Five presenters will follow the keynote speakers and will cover an array of topics pertaining to entrepreneurship in the fields of agriculture and natural resources. The second day of the Symposium will also have two panel discussions titled “Fostering Translation of Research and Entrepreneurship at MU” and “Building Economic Impact from University Research through Effective Industry Partnerships.”

The Symposium is free and open to the public, but all guests are requested to register in advance. There will be light refreshments and lunch on the second day. The Symposium will wrap up with a closing reception, poster session and demonstrations in McQuinn Atrium.

For more information about the speakers, topics and times, visit the Center for Agroforestry website.

By: Samantha Kummerer, Bond LSC

Thomas Braun, a researcher with the German-based Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, visited MU for a Bond Life Sciences and Mizzou Advantage seminar.

The Max Planck Institute aims to find treatment for heart and lung disease. Part of its research focuses on stem cells and how they can decrease damage done to patients’ tissues who suffer from heart or lung disease.

Many components can interfere with effective muscle regeneration and a lot of those this components are connected to cell death.

Braun’s talk focused on the epigenetic and transcriptional control involved in skeletal muscle regeneration. His research explores cell death’s effect on muscle regeneration. They initially hypothesized that cell death would interfere with regeneration.

Muscle regeneration requires satellite cells. Satellite cells, aptly named for being located near muscle and nerve cells, help skeletal muscle fibers grow, repair and regenerate.

When cells become obsolete they activate a cell program to commit suicide. This cell death comes in the form of apoptosis — normal programmed cell death triggered to eliminate old, unnecessary or unhealthy cells — and necroptosis that is a death by inflammation to counter viruses and other disease.

Braun said when muscle fibers break down there is lots of killing of cells.

“We wanted to see if we take the muscle stem cells out of the tissue and put them into a dish whether they would still maintain this increased function to undergo program cell death and quite interestingly this enhanced tendency to go into cell death is actually maintained even after a few different transitions in vitro,” Braun said describing a particular experiment.

This increase cell death, Braun hypothesized, is caused by changes in the chromatin, a complex of DNA and protein.

To better understand exactly which cell death program was responsible for this increase, Braun’s team repeated the experiment but block certain components. This led them to discover the increased cell death correlates with an increase in necrosis.

Braun also believes there are some epigenetic mechanisms involved. Epigenetic involves biological mechanisms that switch genes on and off.

CDH4 is a component of a complex within this epigenetic function. The larger complex is a repressor and keeps the chromatin together. The researchers thought CHD4 might be what is acting on the pathways

“This actually goes along with a massive increase in cell death so this lack of proliferation of the fiber is simply dependent or caused by the cell death of these satellite cells. They undergo cell death and therefore cannot proliferate,” Braun explained.

Braun said his team landed on the conclusion that normally CDH4 represses the expression of

RIBK3, a protein-coding gene, and thus prevents necrosis cell death. But without CHH4, necrosis begins, cells die.

There are still many questions and experiments that lie ahead to figure out the details involved.

Braun’s talk was made possible by the support of Mizzou Advantage and Bond LSC.