Psychology professor at the University of Southampton in the UK. I study memory, metacognition, and categorisation with applications to education and fake news.
@Sander_vdLinden@danwilliamsphil@ArianaMGalian That was an accident, actually (I spend very little time on Twitter - 11 tweets in 13 years - and was testing the buttons!), but you’re right - it is a good one - as was Dan’s critique ;-)
Is misinformation a dangerous virus? Are we living through an infodemic? Is there a vaccine for misinformation? In this review of Sander van der Linden's (@Sander_vdLinden) new book 'Foolproof', I argue that the answer to these questions is "no". A thread:
https://t.co/15kR6JuVbJ
What was once my master's dissertation is now published at JEP:A!
Summary: Both an inductive learning intervention we created and the Bad News game failed to improve news veracity discernment.
Publication link: https://t.co/oHBJYQtEB7
Full text link: https://t.co/mARjGz0Z6K
@Sander_vdLinden@DG_Rand@ArianaMGalian Is this about true/fake or manipulative yes/no? If true/fake, participants are given a scale like 1 (not at all reliable) to 7 (very reliable): Bad News (2019). Rating a true (credible) item as 1, or a fake item as 7, is referring to your items as fake and true, respectively, no?
@Sander_vdLinden@DG_Rand@ArianaMGalian Don’t meta-analyses provide a better alternative to cherry picking of this sort? I could likely find evidence that Bad News decreases discernment if I search hard enough for the right study, but it wouldn’t mean much. It’s the overall results that are important, as Ariana states.
@ArianaMGalian@Sander_vdLinden@DG_Rand Exactly. There is no logical distinction between classifying the items as “true” versus “fake”, “credible” versus “misleading”, or manipulative techniques being “absent” versus “present”, respectively. All three are redundant distinctions in these studies.
@BorisJohnson, I’m outraged that your government would betray animals and the public by dropping the much-anticipated #AnimalsAbroadBill. Fur and foie gras imports must be banned NOW. #QueensSpeech https://t.co/AxlLpL23T1