Presentation of Superpowers in the Maldita Twitchería: we talk to its protagonists

Last Thursday, September 15, we broadcast a broadcast of Maldita Twitchería featuring all the protagonists of this project. On the one hand, four of the five superpowers who were part of the launch video , Mercedes González, Myriam Catalá, Alicia Bayón and Paula González ; on the other hand, the heads of Maldita Educa, Laura del Río , Maldita Tecnología, Naiara Bellio , and Maldita Academia, Pablo Hernández Escayola . Lastly, we have Anabel Forte, Statistics researcher and reference in the dissemination of mathematics in Spanish.

Alicia Bayón: “If the work is to disprove some hoax and explain science to everyone, the effort/benefit ratio is infinite”

Bayón is a chemist, an expert in the use of hydrogen in renewable energy, who has lent her knowledge in multiple articles (like this one or this one ) and one of the protagonists of the promotional video for the Superpoderosas campaign. She explains that she decided to join the Maldita.es community during the first weeks of the COVID-19 confinement, since her close circle “believed a lot of hoaxes, and I no longer knew how to explain to them that most of the things that were circulating «They were lies.» Misinformation about climate change, due to her profession, also bothers her.

Mercedes González: “In confinement, I needed to contribute something against hoaxes, and that’s when I decided to participate”

González, also the protagonist in the Superpoderosas campaign, is a veterinarian and a curse who has lent us her superpowers to explain zoonoses (the diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans). From her point of view, before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the role of veterinarians beyond administering vaccines to pets was not known. “We are on farms, with pets and in wildlife, putting up continuous barriers to prevent a disease from jumping from animals to humans,” she emphasizes.

Myriam Catalá: “Diversity is essential. “If information comes from few sources, it is very easy to manipulate or bias it.”

The news that Catalá was going to be one of the faces of the Superpoderosas campaign has taken everyone she knows by surprise. “I still haven’t finished responding to WhatsApp,” he commented on the live stream. The biochemist and Maldita participate in a biodiversity research unit where she knows well the problems that come with working with homogeneous groups and without having other perspectives, such as that of experts. She considers that the university has somewhat lost contact with the information that society requires, which she regrets because this institution builds knowledge “with rigor and many controls,” although it is not free from problems, precisely, lack of diversity.

Malu Sáenz: “I have loved working on this project because they have given me freedom”

Malu Sáenz, the designer of Maldita.es, has been responsible for giving graphic life to the Superpoderosas project. Together with the Community coordinator, Bea Lara, Sáenz has been scheming from hand sketches what the campaign illustrations should look like, choosing the appropriate colors and typography. Before illustrating the ideas, she investigated which women are usually asked in Maldita.es articles and touch on the main areas of knowledge. In her opinion, she believes that illustrations can be exploited “much more, even if that means more work.”

Diversity and imposter syndrome in the technological world

Paula González lends her cybersecurity superpowers to Maldita Tecnología and Maldito Timo . Now, she is also one of the recognizable faces in the Superpoderosas campaign. Furthermore, she is an example of how those who want to lend their knowledge do not have to be only from a university or research center: private companies and organizations can contribute a lot to the fight against disinformation.

The expert is convinced that diversity is good: “The mental structure of each person does not depend only on what we have learned, but on the backpack of experiences we have as people.” «If you include men and women, people from different countries, backgrounds… you will have more ways of thinking that will help you reach more optimal solutions.»

At this point in the Twitchería, Naiara Bellio, coordinator of Maldita Tecnología, joined, who emphasizes that women “believe that they are not up to the task of explaining certain things, not because they do not know, but because they claim that it is not their field or not. They are completely clear, even though they know much more than a journalist or the general public.”

Academia: A scientific investigation with the Maldita.es community and surveys

Along with the Superpoderosas project, the help that Maldita.es has from the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) includes scientific research to find out if the work we do debunking hoaxes is effective. Part of this involves getting to know the community and involving it in the fight against disinformation: “Researchers from universities in the United States who study disinformation, such as Georgetown or MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) are very interested in the community, They find the community project fascinating,” explains Pablo H. Escayola, head of Academia de Maldita.es. On the other hand, the project contemplates incorporating surveys in the articles to find out how the articles work in preventing hoaxes and what needs to be improved.

Bring the Superpoderosas program to the classrooms

Like Academia, another leg of the project consists of moving Superpoderosas to the centers where Maldita Educa goes. In this way, explains coordinator Laura del Río, “the girls will see that there are leading women doing science in all its areas.” Although students of these ages do not usually consume the traditional media through which information moves, they do receive news (and, in turn, misinformation) «through Instagram, TikTok and other social networks», hence the importance of media literacy in classrooms.

Anabel Forte: “In science we need references, especially proximity, not just Marie Curie”

The Statistics professor from the University of Valencia stopped by the Superpoderosas Twitchería to highlight the role of role models who inspire other women and girls to do science. “Above all, the references of proximity, not only to Marie Curie, who is the most of the most and with two Nobel Prizes.” Her references, by the way, were Pilar, her Mathematics teacher, “a fundamental pillar in how she taught me the subject”; and her thesis director, Susie Bayarri, “a source of inspiration.” We also took advantage of the broadcast to talk about her recently published book, How to Survive Uncertainty? (Next Door Publishers).