Decolonizing Knowledge Upstream: New Ways to Deconstruct and Fight Disinformation in an Era of COVID-19, Extreme Digital Transformation, and Climate Emergency.

Lies and disinformation have always existed throughout human history. However, disinformation has become a "pandemic within a pandemic" with convergence of COVID-19 and digital transformation of health care, climate emergency, and pervasive human-computer interaction in all facets of life. We are living through an era of post-truth. New approaches to fight disinformation are urgently needed and of paramount importance for systems science and planetary health. In this study, we discuss the ways in which extractive and entrenched epistemologies such as technocracy and neoliberalism co-produce disinformation. We draw from the works of David Collingridge in technology entrenchment and the literature on digital health, international affairs, climate emergency, degrowth, and decolonializing methodologies. We expand the vocabulary on and interventions against disinformation, and propose the following: (1) rapid epistemic disobedience as a critical governance tool to resist the cultural hegemony of neoliberalism and its master narrative infinite growth that is damaging the planetary ecosystems, while creating echo chambers overflowing with disinformation, and (2) a two-tiered taxonomy of reflexivity, a state of self-cognizance by knowledge actors, for example, scientists, engineers, and physicians (type 1 reflexivity), as well as by chroniclers of former actors, for example, civil society organizations, journalists, social sciences, and humanities scholars (type 2 reflexivity). This article takes seriously the role of master narratives in quotidian life in production of disinformation and ecological breakdown. The infinite growth narrative does not ask critical questions such as "growth in what, at what costs to society and environment?," and is a dangerous game of brinkmanship that has been testing the planetary ecological boundaries and putting at risk the veracity of knowledge. There is a need for scholars and systems scientists who break ranks with entrenched narratives that pose existential threats to planetary sustainability and are harmful to knowledge veracity. Scholars who resist the obvious recklessness and juggernaut of the pursuit of neoliberal infinite growth would be rooting for living responsibly and in solidarity on a planet with finite resources. The interventions proposed in this study, rapid epistemic disobedience and the expanded reflexivity taxonomy, can advance progressive policies for a good life for all within planetary boundaries, and decolonize knowledge from disinformation in ways that are necessarily upstream, radical, rapid, and emancipatory.

Disinformation as COVID-19's Twin Pandemic: False Equivalences, Entrenched Epistemologies, and Causes-of-Causes.

We are currently facing and traversing in the thick of a twin pandemic: coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and disinformation. Disinformation is false information created and spread deliberately with the intention to mislead public opinion, obscure truths, and undermine trust in knowledge. The digital age we live in is quite different than the printing revolution and invention of the oil-based ink printing press centuries ago. Digital technologies can spread and repeat disinformation at extremely high speeds, while anyone, a qualified expert or not, and with internet access, can become an author. To fight disinformation, we ought to dismantle the entrenched and extractive epistemologies that act as upstream drivers and sites of disinformation production. Epistemology refers to the value-laden knowledge frames, overarching master narratives, and storylines, in which knowledge is produced. If the epistemologies in which we generate knowledge are false, then the knowledge products will be laden with disinformation. Moreover, the harms caused by disinformation can extend well beyond the immediate knowledge domain where disinformation has originated. This occurs when "false equivalence" is used as a form of rhetoric. False equivalence is a type of flawed sense making where equal weight is given to arguments with concrete material evidence, and those that are conjecture, untrue, or unjust. This article presents an analysis of the disinformation pandemic attendant to COVID-19, with an eye to its causes-of-causes: unchecked extractive epistemologies (e.g., technocracy), and the practice of false equivalence in pandemic discourses. We argue that holding the political agency of master narratives to account is essential (1) to fight the disinformation pandemic and (2) for prefigurative politics to build egalitarian and democratic societies in place of the instrumental/transactional relationships that typify the contemporary nation states and the neoliberal university whose ossified rituals lack the normative capacities for critical governance in a time of converging social, digital, and ecological crises. For liberation from disinformation, we should start with liberation from entrenched extractive epistemologies in science and society.

Thanatechnology and the Living Dead: New Concepts in Digital Transformation and Human-Computer Interaction.

In a digital society, shall we be the authors of our own experience, not only during our lifetime but also after we die? We ask this question because dying and bereavement have become even harder, and much less private, in the digital age. New big data-driven digital industries and technologies are on the rise, with promises of interactive 3D avatars and storage of digital memories of the deceased, so they can continue to exist online as the "living dead" in a digital afterlife. Famous rock and roll icons like Roy Orbison, Frank Zappa, Ronnie James Dio, and Amy Winehouse have famously been turned into holograms that can once again give "live" performances on the touring circuit, often pulling in large audiences. Death studies, dying, and grief have become virtual in the 21st century. We live in truly unprecedented times for human-computer interactions. Thanatology is the scientific study of death, dying, loss, and grief. In contrast to the biological study of biological aging (cellular senescence) and programmed cell death (apoptosis), thanatology employs multiple professional lenses, medical, psychological, physical, spiritual, ethical, descriptive, and normative. In 1997, Carla Sofka introduced the term thanatechnology as "technological mechanisms such as interactive videodiscs and computer programs that are used to access information or aid in learning about thanatology topics." Onward to 2021, the advent of social media, the Internet of Things, and sensors that digitize and archive nearly every human movement and experience are taking thanatechnology, and by extension, digital transformation, to new heights. For example, what happens to digital remains of persons once they cease to exist physically? This article offers a critical study and snapshot of this nascent field, and the "un-disciplinary" sociotechnical issues digital thanatechnologies raise in relation to big data. We also discuss how best to critically govern this new frontier in systems science and the digital society. We suggest that new policy narratives such as (1) the right to nonparticipation in relation to information and communication technologies and (2) the planetary public goods deserve further attention to democratize thanatechnology and big data. To the extent that systems science often depends on data from online platforms, for example, in times of pandemics and ecological crises, "critical thanatechnology studies," introduced in this article, is a timely and essential field of scholarship with broad importance for systems science and planetary health.

COVID-19 Digital Health Innovation Policy: A Portal to Alternative Futures in the Making.

"The pandemic is a portal." In the words of the novelist scholar Arundhati Roy, the COVID-19 pandemic is not merely an epic calamity. It has opened up a new space, a portal, to rethink everything, for example, in how we live, work, produce scientific knowledge, provide health care, and relate to others, be they humans or nonhuman animals in planetary ecosystems. Meanwhile, as the intensity of the pandemic escalates, digital health tools such as the Internet of Things (IoT), biosensors, and artificial intelligence (AI) are being deployed to address the twin goals of social distancing and health care in a "no touch" emergency state. Permanent integration of digital technologies into every aspect of post-pandemic civic life-health care, disease tracking, education, work, and beyond-is considered by governments and technology actors around the world. Although digital transformation of health care and industry are in the works, we ought to ensure that digital transformation does not degenerate into "digitalism," which we define here as an unchecked and misguided belief on extreme digital connectivity without considering the attendant adverse repercussions on science, human rights, and everyday practices of democracy. Indeed, the current shrinking of the critically informed public policy space amid a devastating pandemic raises principled questions on the broader and long-term impacts that digital technologies will have on democratic governance of planetary health and society. To this end, a wide range of uncertainties-technical, biological, temporal, spatial, and political-is on the COVID-19 pandemic horizon. This calls for astute and anticipatory innovation policies to steer the health sciences and services toward democratic ends. In this article, we describe new and critically informed approaches to democratize COVID-19 digital health innovation policy, especially when the facts are uncertain, the stakes are high, and decisions are urgent, as they often are in the course of a pandemic. In addition, we introduce a potential remedy to democratize pandemic innovation policy, the concept of "epistemic competence," so as to check the frames and framings of the pandemic innovation policy juggernaut and the attendant power asymmetries. We suggest that if epistemic competence, and attention to not only scientific knowledge but also its framing are broadly appreciated, they can help reduce the disparity between the enormous technical progress and investments made in digital health versus our currently inadequate understanding of the societal dimensions of emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, and extreme digital connectivity on the planet.

What does "Diversity" Mean for Public Engagement in Science? A New Metric for Innovation Ecosystem Diversity.

Diversity is increasingly at stake in early 21st century. Diversity is often conceptualized across ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, sexual preference, and professional credentials, among other categories of difference. These are important and relevant considerations and yet, they are incomplete. Diversity also rests in the way we frame questions long before answers are sought. Such diversity in the framing (epistemology) of scientific and societal questions is important for they influence the types of data, results, and impacts produced by research. Errors in the framing of a research question, whether in technical science or social science, are known as type III errors, as opposed to the better known type I (false positives) and type II errors (false negatives). Kimball defined "error of the third kind" as giving the right answer to the wrong problem. Raiffa described the type III error as correctly solving the wrong problem. Type III errors are upstream or design flaws, often driven by unchecked human values and power, and can adversely impact an entire innovation ecosystem, waste money, time, careers, and precious resources by focusing on the wrong or incorrectly framed question and hypothesis. Decades may pass while technology experts, scientists, social scientists, funding agencies and management consultants continue to tackle questions that suffer from type III errors. We propose a new diversity metric, the Frame Diversity Index (FDI), based on the hitherto neglected diversities in knowledge framing. The FDI would be positively correlated with epistemological diversity and technological democracy, and inversely correlated with prevalence of type III errors in innovation ecosystems, consortia, and knowledge networks. We suggest that the FDI can usefully measure (and prevent) type III error risks in innovation ecosystems, and help broaden the concepts and practices of diversity and inclusion in science, technology, innovation and society.

Stop the Spam! Conference Ethics and Decoding the Subtext in Post-Truth Science. What Would Denis Diderot Say?

Science and its practice always had a subtext, subject to influence by scientists', funders', and other innovation actors' values and assumptions. The recent emergence of post-truth, authoritarian and populist penchants, in both developed and developing countries, has further blurred the already fluid boundaries between material scientific facts and their social construction/shaping by scientific subtext, human values, powers, and hegemony. While there are certain checks, balances, and oversight mechanisms for publication ethics, other pillars of science communication, most notably, scientific conferences and their governance, are ill prepared for post-truth science. Worrisomely, the proliferation of spam conferences is a major cause for concern for integrative biology and postgenomic science. The current gaps in conference ethics are important beyond science communication because conferences help build legitimacy of emerging technologies and frontiers of science and, thus, bestows upon the organizers, funders, enlisted scientific advisors, speakers, among others, power, which in turn needs to be checked. Denis Diderot (1713-1784), a prominent intellectual during the Enlightenment period, has aptly observed that the very act of organizing brings about power, influence, and control. If the subtext of conference practices is left unchecked, it can pave the way for hegemony, and yet more volatile and violent authoritarian governance systems in science and society. This begs for innovative solutions to increase accountability, resilience, and capacity of technology experts and scientists to discern and decode the subtext in science and its communication in the current post-truth world. We propose that the existing undergraduate and graduate programs in life and physical sciences and medicine could be redesigned to include a rotation for exposure to and training in political science. Such innovative PhD+ programs straddling technical and political science scholarship would best equip future students and citizens to grasp and respond to subtext and embedded opaque value and power systems in scientific practices in an increasingly post-truth world. Political science scholarship unpacks the inner workings, subtext, and power dynamics in science and society. Thus, knowledge of political science competency is akin to molecular biology in life sciences. Both make the invisible (e.g., cell biology versus subtext of knowledge) visible. The ability to read subtext in science and claims of post-truth knowledge is a new and essential form of societal literacy in 21st century science and integrative biology.