The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread

Two philosophers of science at the University of California use mathematical modelling and game theory to answer a question that purely psychological accounts of misinformation tend to sidestep: why do false beliefs spread even among rational, well-intentioned people? O'Connor and Weatherall's answer draws on network theory and the economics of belief formation to show that misinformation can propagate through populations without anyone being irrational or acting in bad faith — it is a systemic property of how beliefs spread through social networks under conditions of uncertainty.

The Misinformation Age is particularly valuable for its analysis of manufactured doubt — the strategy, pioneered by the tobacco industry and documented in Merchants of Doubt, of introducing uncertainty into public discourse about settled scientific questions. O'Connor and Weatherall show mathematically why this strategy is so effective: even a small amount of doubt, strategically introduced, can prevent scientific consensus from translating into public belief. For practitioners advising clients on why counter-messaging campaigns so often fail, and what structural interventions are actually likely to work, this book provides some of the most rigorous available analysis.