Pennycook: Timing Matters When Correcting Fake News

Peace Prize winner Gordon Pennycook and colleagues did an experiment about how to disrupt the workings of genuinely faked news. They published a study about what they learned: “Timing Matters When Correcting Fake News,” Nadia M. Brashier, Gordon Pennycook, Adam J. Berinsky, and David G. Rand, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 118, […]

Deceptive-like behaviour in dogs (Canis familiaris)

Dogs are usually considered to be trustworthy pets, but a research (or perhaps research-like) study sheds light on dogs’ ability to use deceptive-like (ore perhaps deceptive) behaviour to get their way. The article “Deceptive-like behaviour in dogs” explains an experiment where …dogs had the chance to choose, in the presence of either a cooperative or […]

Lies, Lies, Lies — and the people who research why people do that

An article called “WHY WE LIE: THE SCIENCE BEHIND OUR DECEPTIVE WAYS,” in the June 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine, explores research about lying. Three of the researchers discussed there — Bruno Verschuere, Kang Lee, and Dan Ariely — are Ig Nobel Prize winners. Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, the journalist who wrote the article, writes about them: … […]

Snopes’ sifters profiled

Brian Stelter profiles two of the Internet’s true heroes: David and Barbara Mikkelson are among those trying to clean the cesspool. The unassuming California couple run Snopes, one of the most popular fact-checking destinations on the Web. For well over a decade they have acted as arbiters in the Age of Misinformation by answering the […]