Category: UW Experts in the News

Lucas Graves, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches misinformation and disinformation, said that arguments about the alleged bias of fact-checking initiatives were made in bad faith.

“In any healthy democratic discourse, you want people offering evidence in public for what kind of statement and what kind of claims should be believed and what shouldn’t, and of course it’s always up to you to make a judgement on whether to believe what you hear,” Graves told Al Jazeera.

“You wouldn’t rely on just anyone to stop your toilet from leaking, but Meta now seeks to rely on just anyone to stop misinformation from spreading on their platforms,” Michael Wagner, from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told AFP.

Barry C. Burden, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of political science and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, said there is not sufficiently reliable data to conclude which candidate got more votes among young people — or any other age group – in Wisconsin.

“Exit polls such as the one Gagnon references are the most immediate source for understanding how groups voted in the election, so they are widely used to explore voting patterns,” Burden said in an email. “But exit polls are known to have systematic errors, especially for estimating vote choices in subgroups such as 18-24 year olds, who make up a small share of the sample and can be a difficult group to survey. There is also a margin of error to consider, as in any other survey. As a result, it is not reasonable to conclude at this point that Trump won over young voters in Wisconsin.”

The video shows “a recognizable part of the western sky” including the bright star Altair that is consistent with the sky around 7 p.m. in early December, James Lattis, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison astronomy department’s Space Place, said in an email.

Lattis said the “vast majority” of the objects are satellites that are visible because they are reflecting sunlight to the observer, and “the rest of the objects are probably a mixture of satellites in higher inclination orbits and aircraft.”

Dr. Ritu Bhatnagar, associate clinical professor of psychiatry and addiction psychiatrist, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health:

“As an addiction psychiatrist, I am keenly aware that people can become dependent on not only substances but also technology. Technology use really increased during the pandemic, especially among adolescents.”

China’s population, reported to be 1.41 billion, will drop to 330 million by the end of the century, predicts Yi Fuxian of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This startling conclusion is included in a paper to be published in the Winter 2024 issue of the Contemporary China Review.

Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the university’s Elections Research Center, said the Electoral College vote is mostly a “sleepy behind-the-scenes operation of little interest to the public,” except for a few distinct times.

Janet Hyde, UW-Madison professor emerita of psychology and gender and women’s studies, believes socialization explains the gender gap. Hyde is an expert in both the psychology of gun violence and women.

“Of course, we don’t know the details about the motives in this particular one, but in general, women are socialized, girls are socialized, to care for others,” Hyde said. “This is such a violation of what girls are socialized to do — they’re socialized to play with baby dolls, and they’re socialized to become nurses. It’s great to be a caring person, but that’s why we see so few female shooters, because it violates the socialization.”

“We do have strong tornadoes,” said Ed Hopkins, a climatologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison-affiliated State Climatology Office. “And it would be appropriate to have some warning to that.”