Allison Ridgway

Emma Sullivan, a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Toronto, had never heard of Pelizaeus Merzbacher Disease (PMD) before starting as a research student in the lab of Ronald Cohn at the Hospital for Sick Children.

Now, not only is she familiar with the rare, genetic nervous system disorder, she is one of six winners of the 2020 Patricia and Peter Shannon Wilson Undergraduate Research Prize for her research paper on genetic treatment options for the disease.

“This project required me to utilize countless softwares, databases and online tools, which was an incredible learning curve for me,” says Sullivan, a student at Victoria College who is pursuing a double major in cell and molecular biology, and health and disease.

“The most important thing I learned through this process is to ask questions. Either as experts or sounding boards, discussing complications with others helped me several times to adjust my perspective so I could find information where I hadn’t previously been looking.”

Sullivan’s fellow Undergraduate Research Prize winners demonstrated similar novel approaches in their work. U of T Libraries awards six prizes of $1,000 each year to undergraduate students from all campuses and disciplines for research they conducted while completing coursework.

“It is wonderful to see our talented students utilizing the wealth of information available at the libraries,” says U of T Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr. “I was particularly impressed by the students’ innovation at navigating the various resources, exemplifying the extraordinary undergraduate work happening at the University of Toronto.”

This year’s winners – all Faculty of Arts & Science students – are Kiera Farrell-Beaulieu (second year, Innis College), Tegan Ridge (fourth year, St. Michael’s College), Colin Stewart (fourth year, University College), Emma Sullivan (third year, Victoria College), Sally Walker-Hudecki (second year, Trinity College), and Braden Zufelt (fourth year, Trinity College).

While U of T Libraries typically hosts a reception for each year’s prize winners, the event could not be held this year due to a limit on gatherings of people during the COVID-19 pandemic. U of T Libraries is instead celebrating this year’s winners online, where they share what the prize means to them and what they have gained from their research experience.

The winning papers are available to read through TSpace, U of T’s open access digital research repository.

“Winning this prize has been the most significant achievement both in my personal life and in my career thus far at the University of Toronto,” says Farrell-Beaulieu, who won the prize for her research paper on the opioid overdose epidemic among youth in Ottawa.

Farrell-Beaulieu says her experiences growing up in Ottawa inspired her winning paper, which was completed for the course JGI 216: Globalization and Urban Change.

“Winning this prize shows that my research is going in a positive direction that can lead to an attitude shift in society’s treatment of teenage addiction and mental health,” she says. “It also means hope – for me, my classmates, community members, and the parents of those who passed away – that this crisis doesn’t have to be a permanence in our community.”

Larry Alford, U of T’s chief librarian, says he was “deeply impressed” at the level of research undertaken by the six winners.

“The students especially deserve to be commended for putting together their applications this year under the challenging circumstances of a global pandemic when the university had to quickly move online and classes were in the midst of transition,” he says.

The Patricia and Peter Shannon Wilson Undergraduate Research Prize is made possible due to an endowment by Patricia Wilson and Peter Wilson that supports U of T Libraries in promoting excellence in undergraduate research.

The winners were chosen by a panel of six judges: Christina Tooulias-Santolin, user services librarian at Robarts Library; Mikaela Gray, liaison and education librarian at the Gerstein Science Information Centre; Tracy Zahradnik, engineering librarian at the Engineering and Computer Science Library; Robert Bothwell, professor of international relations at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy; David Cook, professor of political science at Victoria College; and Jenna Gillen, assistant professor of exercise physiology at the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education.

U of T librarian creates online resource to fight COVID-19 misinformation

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:28:44 +0000

U of T librarian creates online resource to fight COVID-19 misinformation

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 06/26/2020 - 09:28

Cutline

Vincci Lui, a librarian at U of T’s Gerstein Science Information Centre, created a tip sheet that offers resources for fact-checking the avalanche of COVID-19 information on social media and the web (photo by Jesse Carliner)

Allison Ridgway

Topic

Our Community

Coronavirus

Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty of Information

U of T Libraries

In the midst of the pandemic, experts are raising alarms about another public health threat: an “infodemic” of online medical misinformation and disinformation about COVID-19.

In an effort to fight the spread of faulty facts, Vincci Lui, a librarian at the University of Toronto’s Gerstein Science Information Centre, has put together a new online library resource for the U of T community: “How can I spot misinformation about the coronavirus and COVID-19?”

“Everyone’s glued to their phones and looking at things popping up on their newsfeeds,” says Lui, who specializes in bioethics, health policy, and public health.

“It became very apparent that, along with thousands of journal articles coming out every week about COVID-19, some of the reporting on this information is a little incorrect, some is being misinterpreted, some has been taken out of context and some has been misrepresented or made up completely.”

It can be difficult for people to parse the large amounts of new information about COVID-19 coming in every day, according to Lui – especially for those who have little experience in reading medical research in journal articles. That’s why she created a short tip sheet to offer resources for fact-checking and dispelling COVID-19 myths.

The tools include Google’s Fact Check Explorer for COVID and the Coronavirus and the World Health Organization’s Health Alert on WhatsApp. It also offers tips on how to read virus-related social media posts and news articles with a critical eye. For example, the resource page prompts readers to ask whether stories that popped up in their Facebook feeds “use biased or loaded and politicized phrases like ‘Wuhan virus’ or ‘big pharma’?”

Lui created the resource as part of a larger online guide designed as a “one-stop shop” of information resources for U of T researchers, students and faculty members who are studying and doing work around COVID-19.

The guide includes weekly fact-checks addressing common COVID-19 myths and false claims with evidence-based answers.

Misinformation is information that may be rooted in truth but is ultimately incorrect. For example, a newspaper article may inadvertently misinterpret a scientific paper or take its findings out of context. Similarly, findings from faulty scientific studies also continue to be disseminated online long after they have been discredited. There also growing concerns that the traditional safeguards against bad science, such as peer review, are being eroded due to the need for timely results during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Disinformation, by contrast, is information that deliberately misleads people, potentially with a politically motivated goal to sway public opinion. A recent study by Carnegie Mellon University found more than 100 narratives containing false information about COVID-19 – many of them circulated by bots, or automated software programs.

Disinformation can also be spread by sources usually viewed as authoritative, including politicians and world leaders. U.S. President Donald Trump, for example, has been called out by the medical community for numerous false statements about COVID-19, including a suggestion that disinfectant be used through "injection inside or almost a cleaning." While disinfectants can kill viruses on objects and surfaces, injecting or consuming disinfectant, or applying it to skin, can lead to poisoning and death.

Facebook and Twitter posts have also circulated making the extremely dangerous suggestion that people ingest, inject or cover themselves with bleach, which is poisonous if ingested, can cause severe damage to the skin and eyes, and will not protect you against COVID-19. Others have shared conspiracy theories that 5G mobile broadband networks spread COVID-19 ,which, on top of the fact that viruses cannot be spread via radio waves or mobile networks, is proven false by the rate of the COVID-19 spread in countries that do not yet have 5G mobile networks.

A short, conspiracy-laden film called Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind Covid-19 was viewed tens of millions of times on social media before YouTube and Facebook began removing it for violating community guidelines. It, too, has been debunked as disinformation.

“There’s a combination of misinformation – problematic news reporting and misinterpretation of journal articles and scientific studies – along with just outright fake news, information that’s taken as fact and spread, but is just something that someone made up,” says Lui.

Both disinformation and misinformation about COVID-19 are equally problematic, according to Colin Furness, a U of T professor who is cross-appointed with the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Faculty of Information.

“Both encourage people to engage in behaviours that end up being quite dangerous,” he says. “And it may discourage people from engaging in behaviours needed to keep themselves safe.”

Making matters worse, once a person has consumed COVID-19 misinformation or disinformation, it can become difficult to convince them that it is inaccurate, particularly if they do not have an understanding of public health or how viruses work.

Lui says individuals can help their friends and family members fact-check misinformation and disinformation online.

“Usually whenever I get sent something [about COVID-19], I will then do a quick fact-check and then send the information I find to them and just gently say, ‘Oh, did you see this? Actually, this has been disproven,” she says.

“You’re not going to necessarily convince them just by saying, ‘that’s not true,’ but I try to show them what the evidence is saying.”

Six students win U of T Libraries Undergraduate Research Prize

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 25 Jun 2019 16:07:51 +0000

Six students win U of T Libraries Undergraduate Research Prize

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 06/25/2019 - 12:07

Cutline

Karina Stellato won a U of T Libraries Undergraduate Research Prize for her work uncovering the work of female composers in Ontario during the First World War, a group that has received little attention (photo by Paul Terefenko)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Humanities

Music

St. Michael's College

Trinity College

U of T Libraries

Undergraduate Students

From an in-depth analysis of a 1950s mass-criticism campaign against a Chinese film to a search for forgotten women composers of the First World War, the winners of this year’s University of Toronto Libraries Undergraduate Research Prize showed the power of library research.

Six undergraduate students – all from U of T’s Faculty of Arts & Science – were awarded $1,000 prizes for research they conducted while completing course assignments.

Karina Stellato, a St. Michael’s College student, used primary sources in her research on women composers in Ontario during the First World War that history has forgotten. She sifted through hundreds of war-related popular songs from the era and located over 100 compositions by women – more than has been identified in previous research on the subject.

“This topic is victim to both the underdeveloped history of Canadian popular music and female Canadian composers, resulting in this being ground-breaking research into a new aspect of the history of the Great War,” Stellato said.

From left to right: Sterling Mancuso, Chloe Bray, Kenzie Zimmer, Karina Stellato, Ron Ma and Danielle Lee (photo by Paul Terefenko)

Each year, U of T Libraries invites undergraduate students from all disciplines to submit a research project that they have completed as part of their course work and that demonstrates innovative research techniques. This year’s winners – which also included Chloe Bray, Danielle Lee, Ron Ma, Sterling Mancuso and Kenzie Zimmer – came from a range of fields, including international relations, film studies and nutrition sciences.

The winning papers are available to read through TSpace, U of T’s open access digital research repository.

“It’s wonderful to see the research students produce from the wealth of information that we have available here at the libraries,” said U of T Libraries Chief Librarian Larry Alford at an event held earlier this month.

U of T Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr said in her remarks that the event “highlights the importance of having such a wealth of resources for our students so they can access traditional scholarly materials and primary sources like letters, rare books, films and more.

“Often, information housed in our libraries is simply not found anywhere else.”

U of T Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr with winner Ron Ma and Associate Professor James Cahill (photo by Paul Terefenko)

Ma, a student at Trinity College, described the challenges – and rewards – of conducting in-depth research in the reflective statement he wrote as part of his winning submission. The second-year student’s research paper, completed for his cinema studies class, explores the controversy over a 1950s Chinese film called The Life of Wu Xun.

While the film was initially praised, an anonymous article published by Mao Zedong led to a mass criticism campaign against it in 1951. Using microfilm stored in U of T’s Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library, Ma found Chinese-language newspaper articles from the 1950s that document criticism of the film.

“The most daunting part was getting started given that I had no experience handling microfilm,” Ma said of the format that contain reproductions of documents, often from a newspaper or catalogue. “I was afraid that I would ruin something ... [but] I was fortunate enough to have seasoned librarians at the East Asian library show me how to use the microfilm reader so that I could efficiently find the articles that I needed.”

Librarians from the Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library attended the prize reception to support Ma and the other winners.

“Discovering these hidden gems showed me the importance of conducting original research,” said Ma. “Primary sources may be hard to find and tedious to examine, but they are irreplaceable components of any historical account, bringing the historian one step closer to retrieving the past.”