In an age riven by factual disputes over everything from climate change to vaccine efficacy to the size of inauguration crowds, how best should we understand the spread and persistence of polarised beliefs? Why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread without apparent consequence for the people who hold them?

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?

In their 2019 book The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread, co-authors Cailin O'Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the persistence of false belief, and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively. They bring much-needed perspectives from the philosophy of science to what is an increasingly dangerous societal malaise.

Cailin O'Connor will be joining London Futurists in this live webinar to share key highlights from this book, and to bring some of its recommendations up-to-date in the light of subsequent events and research.