With disinformation being such a big issue in the modern world, many groups or organizations in the scientific community are looking for ways to combat this phenomenon.

Outside of just news, there are also instances of disinformation in scientific studies. One particular example that comes to mind is the link between vaccines and autism, which has been proven to be false years after the study was published.

At Ashland University, a group of psychology majors led by Associate Professor of Psychology Dr. Christopher R. Chartier hopes to leave their mark on this endeavor to set the record straight.

The nine-student group has been selected to participate in the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) new program to evaluate if machines can distinguish between sources that are credible and those that are filled with false information.

The title of the program is “Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence” (SCORE) and will be done through the Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA).

PSA has between 300-400 labs in 50 countries around the world.

The group was given a three-year, $7.6 million contract, to help fund their efforts as they look to re-replicate over 3,000 studies done in the past.

Senior Nick Bloxsom, a double major in psychology and criminal justice, said that when Chartier first described the project, he said wanted it to be the “CERN for psychology.”

CERN is a European organization that deals with major science projects, such as the hadron collider.

“Psychologists and other scientists are pea hacking in order to get the results that they want to find, rather than the results they should actually be finding,” Bloxsom said. What we are doing is trying to make open science more popular and making methods more transparent in the future through this project.”

Bloxsom has been Chartier’s research assistant since his sophomore year and said that what started the project was a viral blog post by Chartier.

“It went viral in the academic world, and then we just picked up the responsibilities associated with the creation of the project,” Bloxsom said.

Another student involved with the project, junior Savannah Lewis, hopes that the group can help improve the field of psychology’s reputation with the public.

“The field has gotten some bad press because of the whole ‘vaccines cause autism’ controversy, and so we’re trying to ensure these problems don’t happen in the future,” Lewis said. “We’re trying to do science right.”

The way that the group will choose studies to examine is by a 30-60 person committee that will choose a few in one particular field. From there, the entire group will select one from that batch.

“Research is such a big thing in the field of psychology because, without the research, we wouldn’t have the information that we have now,” Lewis said. “It’s important to me not just for my undergrad, but also as a future psychologist.”