misinformation
Misinformation about voting crops up around the U.S. as midterm elections near
In Colorado, an error in early October involving voter registration postcards that were mailed to non-citizens in the state morphed into a conspiracy theory about voter fraud. In Iowa, voters in late September received phone calls spreading misinformation about how they could vote, with Iowans falsely told they could cast their ballots over the phone, the Iowa Capital Dispatch […]
Advocates at forum concerned over misinformation and the integrity of courts
“There are different ways we can respond to judicial decisions. If you have a legitimate principle disagreement with a decision, that is one thing. If you have a personal attack on the integrity of the judge who decides the decision or the court itself, that is an entirely different entity,” panelist Kathleen M. Trafford said.
Cognitive biases and brain biology help explain why facts don’t change minds
By Keith M. Bellizzi, University of Connecticut “Facts First” is the tagline of a CNN branding campaign which contends that “once facts are established, opinions can be formed.” The problem is that while it sounds logical, this appealing assertion is a fallacy not supported by research. Cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies have found that the […]
Election officials at U.S. Senate hearing describe threats, spread of misinformation
WASHINGTON — Democrats on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee last week explored how to combat violent threats lodged against election officials, while Republicans questioned why the Department of Justice isn’t doing more to investigate threats against crisis pregnancy centers and Supreme Court justices. During a hearing on protecting election officials, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite […]
Misinformation is deadly. What are we going to do about it?
Misinformation is deadly. It kills humans and democracy. All of us have some responsibility for this serious threat to society. All of us are affected by it, regardless of whether we use social media. And all of us need to do something about it. The examples are hard to ignore: An insurrection at the U.S. […]
Report calls on medical boards to go after COVID “disinformation doctors;” Ohio’s has not
In June, Sherri Tenpenny, a state-licensed doctor of osteopathic medicine and notorious COVID-19 disinformer, baselessly claimed in a televised, government meeting that COVID-19 vaccines “magnetize” recipients and “interface” with cell towers. The comment wasn’t an aberration from Tenpenny, who has in the past described vaccines as a tool of “depopulation.” The Ohio State Medical Board, […]
What will 2022 bring in the way of misinformation on social media? 3 experts weigh in
By Anjana Susarla, Michigan State University; Dam Hee Kim, University of Arizona, and Ethan Zuckerman, UMass Amherst At the end of 2020, it seemed hard to imagine a worse year for misinformation on social media, given the intensity of the presidential election and the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic. But 2021 proved up to the […]
Future osteopathic doctors fight against the ‘disinformation dozen’ to save their profession
When Dr. Sherri Tenpenny told a hearing of the Ohio House Health Committee that the COVID-19 vaccine magnetized people, not only was she relaying scientifically unfounded and false claims about the vaccine, she was also contributing to an ongoing skepticism of her profession. Tenpenny — who was invited to speak that day by an Ohio […]
More good covid, vaccine news for Ohio
The days are warming and more good coronavirus news is coming to Ohio. After drugmakers Pfizer and Moderna on Tuesday announced big increases in vaccine production, Gov. Mike DeWine on Thursday said that the number of doses coming into Ohio would rise from about 230,000 this week to about 310,000 next week. “We may see […]
She’s a public health professor by day; a COVID-19 truther by night
Nearly 500,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, but that’s not scaring Catherine Stein. As the pandemic’s death toll rises and the scientific consensus has crystalized regarding how COVID-19 spreads and how to prevent it, Stein, who teaches infectious disease epidemiology at Case Western Reserve University, remains defiant. COVID-19, she wrote in January 2021, is “not […]
YouTube censors Ohio House hearing video for COVID-19 misinformation
The opening testimony Wednesday in support of a legislative effort to allow lawmakers to vote down public health orders went far enough off the rails for YouTube to remove footage of the speaker. Tom Renz, an attorney for Ohio Stands Up, filed a lawsuit in federal court in September seeking to overturn any and all […]
3 reasons for information exhaustion – and what to do about it
An endless flow of information is coming at us constantly: It might be an article a friend shared on Facebook with a sensational headline or wrong information about the spread of the coronavirus. It could even be a call from a relative wanting to talk about a political issue. All this information may leave many […]