Venue: High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart, Germany (HLRS)
Date: 3rd – 5th of August 2022
Organizer: “Trust in Information” Research group
Trust in science is of central importance for democratic societies, which aim at participatory decision-making processes. To enable well-informed public discussions and to promote acceptance of political decisions on this basis, scientific results must be widely trusted. However, various forms of mistrust and skepticism about science, as well as confusion about scientific results, seem to be on the rise. They are thus increasingly becoming a social problem. A key challenge in fostering trust in science is to adequately communicate intra-scientific practices. Science is a complex endeavor in many respects, which is why the interpretation of scientific results is challenging even for scientists themselves. Consequently, uncertainty and profound debates characterize the inner-scientific discussion. However, if the interpretation of scientific results is challenging and already controversial within the scientific community, how are they to be communicated to the outside world without generating mistrust? The summer school will address these complex problems from various angles. We aim to better understand the inner-scientific complexity and discuss the question of how it should be dealt with in the interplay between science, politics, media and the broader public.
Central questions to be addressed are for example: What makes the interpretation of experimental results so complex that they are usually contested? How should science communication deal with the uncertainty of scientific results and the fact that they are disputed among scientists without causing mistrust? How can science communication reach audiences that are notoriously neglected?
In more detail, we plan to hold the following sessions:
1. Scientific Practices (Day one) :
1.1 Trust in Experiments
1.2 Understanding the Failure of Replication in Science
2. Science Communication (Day two) :
2.1 Communication of Uncertainty in the Interplay between Science and the Public and its Connection to Trust in Science
2.2 Trust-building Science Communication: How to Include Neglected Audiences?
3. Science & Politics (Day three) :
3.1 Scientific Disputes
3.2 From the Scientification of Politics to the Politicization of Science
To apply for the summer school, please write to us at phil@hlrs.de. Please include a short motivation letter (no longer than 1 page) and a short CV. If you are working on a project or a use case that is related to the conference’s topic, do not hesitate to indicate this as well. The deadline for registration is the 1st of May. It is planned that the conference will take place at the HLRS in Stuttgart. Note that there will be no participation fee. If you have any questions, please contact phil@hlrs.de.
About us: HLRS is a research institute and a supercomputer center with one of the fastest computer systems worldwide. HLRS conducts its own research in the field of high-performance computing. Emphasis is placed on the topics of scalability, performance optimization, big data, green IT and the application areas of health, environment, energy and mobility. HLRS houses a department for the philosophy of computational sciences headed by Dr. Andreas Kaminski. The project “Trust in Information” is kindly funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and Arts Baden-Württemberg.