The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread
Jan 2019 · Yale University Press
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About this ebook
"Empowering and thoroughly researched, this book offers useful contemporary analysis and possible solutions to one of the greatest threats to democracy." — Kirkus Reviews
Editors' choice, The New York Times Book Review
Recommended reading, Scientific American
Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them?
Philosophers of science Cailin O'Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what's essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs. It might seem that there's an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that's right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not?
The Misinformation Age, written for a political era riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, shows convincingly that what you believe depends on who you know. If social forces explain the persistence of false belief, we must understand how those forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.
"[The authors] deftly apply sociological models to examine how misinformation spreads among people and how scientific results get misrepresented in the public sphere." —Andrea Gawrylewski, Scientific American
"A notable new volume . . . The Misinformation Age explains systematically how facts are determined and changed—whether it is concerning the effects of vaccination on children or the Russian attack on the integrity of the electoral process." —Roger I. Abrams, New York Journal of Books
Editors' choice, The New York Times Book Review
Recommended reading, Scientific American
Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite bad, even fatal, consequences for the people who hold them?
Philosophers of science Cailin O'Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what's essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false beliefs. It might seem that there's an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that's right, then why is it (apparently) irrelevant to many people whether they believe true things or not?
The Misinformation Age, written for a political era riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, shows convincingly that what you believe depends on who you know. If social forces explain the persistence of false belief, we must understand how those forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.
"[The authors] deftly apply sociological models to examine how misinformation spreads among people and how scientific results get misrepresented in the public sphere." —Andrea Gawrylewski, Scientific American
"A notable new volume . . . The Misinformation Age explains systematically how facts are determined and changed—whether it is concerning the effects of vaccination on children or the Russian attack on the integrity of the electoral process." —Roger I. Abrams, New York Journal of Books
"Empowering and thoroughly researched, this book offers useful contemporary analysis and possible solutions to one of the greatest threats to democracy." — Kirkus Reviews
Editors' choice, The New York Times Book Review
Recommended reading, Scientific American
Why should we care about having tr...
Ratings and reviews
5 reviews
Bdectro
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January 24, 2024
It is a difficult read with a Ton of information on how scientists & doctors (and educated people) can come to incorrect viewpoints based upon input from their peers. However, although it is a book on "misinformation" it tends to mostly focus on misinformation on conservatives and conservative publications. It reads in depth about scientific propaganda but as the book continues it actually focuses on propaganda from conservative outlets, and reads like a propaganda machine for the left political wing. it hardly hits on any left-wing propaganda. It serves it's purpose, to imply even the "educated" can be swayed by misinformation, but its political view point is undoubtedly from the left
Frank Jenkins
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November 5, 2025
The models of interaction help to describe how truth and fallacy come to acceptance within a community of scholars or citizens.
About the author
Cailin O'Connor is associate professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California, Irvine. James Owen Weatherall is professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the New York Times best-seller The Physics of Wall Street . Both are members of the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Science. They reside in California.
Cailin O'Connor is associate professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California, Irvine. James Owen Weatherall is professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California, Irvine, and author of the New York Times best-seller The Physics of Wall Street...
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