Disinformation, Denialism, and the Assault on Truth with Dr Lee McIntyre

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Disinformation is the scourge of the information age, causing both science denial (climate denial, anti-vaxx, etc.) as well as the more recent 'reality' denial (Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen, Q-Anon conspiracies, etc.). People do not wake up one day wondering whether there are tracking microchips in the Covid vaccines or a Jewish space laser causing the California wildfires. They are led to those ridiculous, false beliefs through strategic lies, told by those who created them, in service of their own economic, ideological, or political interests. The problem, however, is that once disinformation is in the information stream, it does not just tempt someone to believe a falsehood, but also polarizes them around a factual issue, which undermines trust and poisons the path by which they might revise past beliefs and embrace future true ones.

How to address this? Engaging with deniers is one path. In a recent study in Nature Human Behavior Cornelia Betsch and Phillip Schmid provide the first empirical evidence that science deniers can sometimes be led to give up their false beliefs. Most intriguing, one of the methods for doing this has nothing to do with the content of the belief itself, but focuses instead on the path of reasoning that led them to it. 'Technique rebuttal' thus provides a ray of hope for philosophers and other non-scientists to address science (and reality) denial, even if they are not content experts on the topic of denial. But there is a hitch. This method doesn't always work... and it is slow.

What might work better? In his talk Dr Lee McIntyre will explore a few ideas from his most recent book On Disinformation (MIT Press, 2023), in which he claims that the pinch point on the disinformation highway from creation to amplification to belief is to clamp down on the spread of disinformation.

Dr Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, he previously taught philosophy at Colgate University, Boston University, Simmons College, Tufts Experimental College, and Harvard Extension School.

He is the author of On Disinformation (MIT Press, 2023), How to Talk to a Science Denier (MIT Press, 2021), The Art of Good and Evil (Braveship Books, 2021), Philosophy of Science (Routledge, 2019), The Sin Eater (Braveship Books, 2019), The Scientific Attitude (MIT Press, 2019), Post-Truth (MIT Press, 2018), Respecting Truth (Routledge, 2015), Dark Ages (MIT Press, 2006), and Laws and Explanation in the Social Sciences (Westview Press, 1996). He is the co-editor of five anthologies: Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science (MIT Press, 1994), two volumes in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science series: Philosophy of Chemistry: Synthesis of a New Discipline (Springer, 2006) and Philosophy of Chemistry: Growth of a New Discipline (Springer 2014), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Social Science (Routledge, 2017), and A Companion to Public Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2022). McIntyre is also the author of Explaining Explanation: Essays in the Philosophy of the Special Sciences (Rowman and Littlefield, 2012), which is a collection of twenty years’ worth of his philosophical essays.

His popular essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Nature, Scientific American, Newsweek, The New Statesman, and numerous other venues. He has appeared on CNN International on Amanpour and Company — and several other programs on PBS, NPR and the BBC — and has spoken at the United Nations, NASA, and the Vatican.

Please note, this event will be held in The Maypole's Upstairs Bar, which is at the top of a steep staircase and has poor accessibility; please contact venue directly for details: maypolefreehouse.co.uk/

Also, start time for this event is 7pm.

Events are booked and ticketed through our box office: tickettailor.com/events/cambridgeskeptics