Stephan Lewandowsky

3 weeks ago | science.org | Maria Fernandez |María Fernández |Pearse J. Buchanan |David Geier |Stephan Lewandowsky

“Knowledge is power”—or at least it was when Sir Francis Bacon coined this phrase in the 16th century. In today’s world, we frequently encounter a different variant of this philosophy, perhaps best described as “power dismisses knowledge.” We need look no further than the recent US measles outbreak to see how this modern framework wreaks havoc when applied to public health.

1 month ago | nature.com | Segun T. Aroyehun |Almog Simchon |Fabio Carrella |Jana Lasser |Stephan Lewandowsky |David Garcia

Pursuit of honest and truthful decision-making is crucial for governance and accountability in democracies. However, people sometimes take different perspectives of what it means to be honest and how to pursue truthfulness. Here we explore a continuum of perspectives from evidence-based reasoning, rooted in ascertainable facts and data, at one end, to intuitive decisions that are driven by feelings and subjective interpretations, at the other. We analyse the linguistic traces of those contrasting perspectives in congressional speeches from 1879 to 2022. We find that evidence-based language has continued to decline since the mid-1970s, together with a decline in legislative productivity. The decline was accompanied by increasing partisan polarization in Congress and rising income inequality in society. The results highlight the importance of evidence-based language in political decision-making. This research explores the linguistic traces of evidence-based reasoning and intuitive decision-making in congressional speeches from 1879 to 2022. The analysis suggests that evidence-based language has continued to decline since the mid-1970s, together with a decline in legislative productivity.

Nov 3, 2024 | nature.com | Gordon Pennycook |Adam Berinsky |Beth Goldberg |Stephan Lewandowsky

AbstractMisinformation is a major focus of intervention efforts. Psychological inoculation—an intervention intended to help people identify manipulation techniques—is being adopted at scale around the globe. Yet the efficacy of this approach for increasing belief accuracy remains unclear, as prior work uses synthetic materials that do not contain claims of truth.

Oct 3, 2024 | science.org | Adrian C. Hayday |Nicola Festuccia |Roman C. Sarott |Stephan Lewandowsky

Concern about misinformation and its toxic effects on democracy is widespread. A survey of nearly 1500 experts by the World Economic Forum ranked misinformation and disinformation (the latter being intentionally spread, whereas the former may arise accidentally) as the top global risk during the next 2 years. Examples of misinformation-fueled events abound.

Sep 20, 2024 | chronicle.com | Stephan Lewandowsky |Naomi Oreskes

The spread of misinformation poses a serious threat to science, public health, and democracies worldwide. In a recent essay in these pages, Jacob Shapiro and Sean Norton highlight the risks from disinformation (which they define as “the purposeful use of false information to deliberately deceive others”), but go on to argue that scholars should stop studying misinformation (“false or misleading information spread without specific intent to deceive”).