Fighting Fake Facts

Scientific methods, known for their systematic and rigorous approaches, have yielded countless discoveries and essential technologies that enhance our lives, fostering ease, productivity, and comfort. Yet, many of these discoveries and technologies have facilitated the dissemination of false and potentially harmful information―the realm of fake facts. The distortion of information, encompassing misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, poses a threat to democratic societies and the core of scientific progress. Consequently, the scientific community must explore why fake news resonates, identify detection strategies, and develop effective countermeasures. The years 2020 and 2021, dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, underscored the impact of fake news. Conspiracy theories, dangerous pseudo-therapies, and anti-vaccine movements thrived, highlighting the urgency of addressing false information. The collection of articles in this book covers key topics related to fake facts and fake news, aiming to enhance our understanding of their impact and to counter them using scientific principles.

Peter Seitz is a Professor Emeritus of Optoelectronics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL). He received his M.Sc. degree in experimental physics in 1980 from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, and in 1984, he obtained his Ph.D. degree from ETH for research work on X-ray Computer Tomography at the Institute for Biomedical Engineering. From 1984 to 1987, he was a staff member at the RCA research laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, (David Sarnoff Research Center) and in Zurich, Switzerland, performing applied research in optics and image processing. In 1987, he joined the Paul Scherrer Institute in Zurich, where he created and led the Image Sensing research group. From 1997 to 2012, he was working for CSEM, first as a group leader and then as the head of CSEM’s Photonics division in Zurich. From 2006 to 2011, he was CSEM’s Vice President Nanomedicine, building and heading the Research Center for Nanomedicine in Landquart, Switzerland. Since 1998, he has also been a professor of Optoelectronics at the Institute for Microtechnology of the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and in 2009, he transferred as an adjunct professor to EPFL. He was the Managing Director of the ETH Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab, concurrently building and heading the Hamamatsu Photonics Europe Innovation Center. Peter Seitz has authored and co-authored more than 200 publications in the fields of applied optics, semiconductor image sensing, machine vision, optical metrology, and in the MedTech domain. He holds 75 patents, and he has won more than 20 national and international awards together with his teams, of which the most prestigious is the IST Grand Prize 2004 of the European Commission. He is a Fellow of the European Optical Society (EOS), the Vice President of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW), and the Vice President of the European PPP Photonics21.

Mark Eisenegger is a full professor in the Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ) at the University of Zurich and the director of the Research Institute for the Public Sphere and Society (fög), also at the University of Zurich. From 2014 to 2017, he was a full professor at the Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg. He is a board member of the Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research (SACM), President of the Kurt-Imhof Foundation for Media Quality, and was Editor of ”Communication Theory” from 2019 to 2023. His main research areas are organizational communication, media change, the digital transformation of the public sphere and quality in journalism. He is especially interested in how digitization is transforming the public sphere and how this process affects organizations and journalism.

Manfred Max Bergman is a professor of social research and methodology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan. He is a graduate of the University of California, holds MA degrees from the Universities of Geneva and Cambridge, and completed his Ph.D. at the latter university. He chairs the World Sustainability Forum and the Basel Sustainability Forum, and he is a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network initiative. He is the Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of World and until recently was the Section Editor-in-Chief of Sustainability. A film he recently produced with Zinette Bergman on three case studies on sustainability in Pittsburgh, PA, has received three awards. He previously held the position of Head of Research and Methodology at the Swiss Information and Data Archive Service for the Social Sciences and co-directed the South African Social Sciences Research Methodology Winter School. He has also served as the editor of the Swiss Journal of Sociology and co-editor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research. His research focuses on sustainability, particularly the interdependence of society, business, and government in a globalized world, and he is currently developing new research methods for policy-relevant and change-oriented research related to societal sustainability transformations.