Zach Schultz for here and. >> Now.
>> Turning back to higher ed cuts. He calls it the Friday
night massacre of the verifiable truth a UW-Madison professor
researching and amplifying accurate claims about vaccines
saw his $5 federal grant terminated a week ago. The
National Science Foundation grant was axed. Quote, per the
presidential action that the NSF will not support research with
the goal of combating misinformation, disinformation
and malinformation that could be used to infringe on protected
speech rights. Professor of Journalism and Mass
Communications Michael Wagner is here. Ahead of this, we should
note PBS Wisconsin is part of UW-Madison. Hi, Mike.
>> Hi. Good to see you. >> How surprised were you?
Shocked, really, that your grant was terminated?
>> Well, in the short term, I wasn't shocked. I mean, we've
been under scrutiny from the federal government and even the
weaponization of government subcommittee in the House for
the last year and a half. And so we knew this day was coming and
so on the one hand, it wasn't that shocking, although we knew
we didn't know exactly when it was going to happen, but more
broadly, to say that researchers in the United States who made,
you know, grant proposals and had them vetted by a series of
experts that were blind to us, experts that were blind to u % ,
evaluating us, said, this is a project worth doing and that
could really help people. And then to have the government say,
we're not so interested in sharing things that are true,
that's really shocking. And what's even more shocking is
that it's not just happening to us. I mean, it's a big deal to
us and our team and the grant we have. But this is happening all
across campus and all across the country.
Now that is on hold. What were you looking at and why?
>> So we were really interested in ways that we could try and
improve the information environment without engaging in
content moderation. So one thing that's really controversial, and
there are experts who study this is to say if some things are
false or and especially if they're dangerous, maybe
platforms should be pressured to take them down. That's not what
we do. What we say is we want to identify networks of
conversation online that are sharing information that might
be false. Then we want to see are there independent fact
checkers and independent research studies that have been
done at least three that confirm this thing that's being shared
online isn't true? If that's the case, then we want to create
messages that say, here's the stuff that's true, and then we
want to use the platforms advertising mechanisms to buy
ads and show them to the people who saw the false stuff. So put
simply, if people are seeing things that aren't true, we want
to make a message about something that is true and share
it with people so that the truth can compete with the falsehood.
We don't want to take any content down, we just want those
two things to compete, and then we want to see. Does sharing the
truth make things better for people?
the only sizable grant eliminated at UW-Madison. At
least $12.6 million in direct research funding has been
canceled. What are you hearing from your colleagues about all
of this? >> We organized a teach in for
our undergraduate students last week, and in that conversation,
one faculty member from the School of Human Ecology noted,
you know, more than a dozen grants related to Social
Security studies. So this is not not just for seniors, but for
lots of other folks who get Social Security benefits. People
with disabilities, children of people who have died and don't
have parents anymore. All kinds of folks who need we need to
understand how well are these benefits helping them? Is it the
right amount? Are they being, you know, distributed in the
right way? All those kinds of things, all those got
immediately killed. We've heard from people in the medical
school that in some cases there are hiring freezes. Even at the
VA, so that new staff can't be hired and new research
assistants can't be hired. This is especially hard for
undergraduates who say they want to go to med school, because you
really need to have experience in a lab to make your
application to med school, Singh. And now it's getting
harder to do those kinds of things on our campus. So it's
happening all over social sciences, hard sciences,
humanities everywhere. understand the motivation?
>> There seems to be a coordinated war on universities
and their mission, because universities are places where we
have really hard conversations about complex things. There are
places where the truth is iterative, and we learn more
over time. And sometimes things that we thought were true change
in the face of new evidence. Sometimes the new evidence turns
out to be wrong, and the scientific process is slow and
messy and controversial. And sometimes scientists don't
communicate it as clearly as they ought to. But I think
there's a coordinated war on folks who are interested in
studying these kinds of things. And I think it's worth citizens
asking who is to gain by stopping misinformation research
in the United States, who is to gain by stopping Social security
research in the United States, whose pockets are getting lined
and whose are getting fleeced? >> So, having just spoken to
Congressman Tom Tiffany, he says that people upset about these
kinds of cuts, all they have to do is make a case and maybe they
can be restored. So what's your case?
>> Our case is that we have a scientifically vetted process
that actually went through two phases. The NSF for our grant
had a phase one that was a much smaller word, still a lot of
money, $750,000, which is a lot of money, especially in social
sciences. And it gave us a year to demonstrate a proof of
concept that we can do this. We did that. We submitted our $5
million grant and the scientists who evaluated it said, yes, we
think you can do this. We've also been making a ton of
progress that we regularly share with the NSF every year. And so
we turn in our yearly reports about, here are the new things
we've learned. Here's how we're changing what we're doing. And
so we're simply trying to learn things that are true and share
them. And I don't think it's in the interest of the United
States to stop doing that. States to stop doing that.