Illumination 2.0

 The discussion around Twitter bans is hot, mostly with regard to specific accounts that provide dangerous false information.  But what about accounts that appear to be legitimate users, but somehow are coordinated accounts posting false or misleading information?  One false-information source alone is not much influence, and one can be singled out, reported or appropriately banned without consequence.   But does the mass posting of a common false claim from dozens of accounts provide a false sense of consensus where none really exists?  It's right from the Goebbels playbook-- tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.  It works because repetition and the perception of broad support from a number of supposedly independent accounts provides the illusion of truth.  This barrage occurred following news that Oxitec mosquitoes were being released in the Florida Keys.  Repetition of a common message from multiple accounts that appear to be i...

 Over the last week the trolls are back, and polluting social media with more anti-Folta nonsense.  I won't even touch on it.  Nobody has looked at it, nobody really cares.  It gets few likes, retweets, etc., and those that do show some love to the filth are in the defamation network.  It's dead. But sadly I need to always play defense.  Now that these allegations are forever placed in findable space, I must reluctantly respond.  I teach students, I work with kids, I lead community initiatives, and when someone claims that I'm issuing "threats" I unfortunately have to provide my perspective. First, Carey Gillam.  She tweeted this, this week: Carey is one of very few people on my "do not Heimlich" list.  She is one person that I believe is truly evil, and takes pleasure in harming others.  When I begged her to leave my family out of some online slander, she doubled down and went after someone very close to me.  I appealed to her as a...

 In 2015 the anti-science, scientist slander machine called US-RTK provided my emails and a story to New York Times reporter Eric Lipton.  As stated by Lipton on the 9/17/2015 Kojo Nnamdi Show on NPR, (USRTK leader) "Gary Ruskin handed me a story and wanted me to publish it." The result was a gross misrepresentation of me and my motivations to teach science. To them, it was all part of a corporate cabal to misinform the public in exchange for grant money.  Time has shown that none of it was true.  Still the story lives on the internet, forever attached to me in a Google search.  And folks from USRTK keep it alive and well.  Last week Stacy Malkan, a USRTK henchtwit, continued to post links to the Lipton story, at least to the documents that supported it, plucked from their context for easy re-interpretation. Yes, that's what I do.  I talk to folks about communication, which has a significant component of psychology.  How do people process informa...