Chapter Review: What is Truth?

“In this book we argue that social factors are essential to the understanding the spread of beliefs, including--especially--false beliefs. We discuss important mechanisms by which false beliefs spread and discuss why, perhaps counterintuitively, these very same mechanisms are often invaluable to us in our attempts to reach truth. .... the spread of ideas from scientists and other experts to the public and to politicians is deeply influenced by social factors--and for this reason is readily manipulated.” -- Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread, pages 11, 17, 2019


This is a review of chapter 1, What is Truth, of the 2019 book, The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread by Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall. My review of the whole book is here. This review describes the tactics that modern propagandists use to deceive scientists, policy makers, politicians, social influencers and the public generally.

In this review, I used ‘propaganda’ to mean a tool to deceive one or more people by any means. The book focuses on using social networks to plant, spread and reinforce false beliefs. Inherent in social manipulation, humans are also susceptible to propaganda due to various inherited psychological traits, e.g., a usually weak ability to think rationally in terms of statistics.

Propagandist tactics generally

Four points stand out. First, propagandist deceit usually does not need to be complete among relevant people for it to be effective. Deceiving targeted people and groups can effectively serve the propagandists goal. Second, it is not necessary for propagandists to hold back the spread of belief in actual fact-based truth forever. Instead, by sufficiently blocking belief in truth, propagandists can delay social action for decades. Examples of propagandist-inspired social inaction that was, or still is, effectively maintained for years include social paralysis about the bad health effects of cigarette smoking and the bad environmental effects of our continuing unregulated release of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, including ozone-destroying CFCs.

Since the book was published in 2019, it predated the COVID-19 pandemic. I would add to the propaganda list, the propaganda about COVID-19 and related truths, e.g., anti-facemask propaganda, that the president, conservatives, right wing populists and GOP politicians are spewing on the American people right now, sometimes with lethal consequences.

Third, the authors argue that both political and industrial propaganda are important and can be personally and socially damaging. That scientists, journalists and policy makers can be deceived and used just like everyone else is an important point to keep in mind. Effective propagandists are acutely aware of human social and cognitive traits, flaws and biases that can be used to lead to the spread of false beliefs. For example, humans did not evolve to think in terms of statistics and most (but not all) people don't think that way. Propagandists know this very well and they use it relentlessly and ruthlessly to deceive. The tactic is simple, effective and often very low cost.

A corollary of that relentless ruthlessness is the sheer lack of morality in the propaganda industry. And, it is a very big industry that is called by various names, e.g, public relations firms, marketing firms, etc. There are usually no moral overt qualms about deceiving people or harming them, including killing them. Cigarettes, climate science denial and COVID-19 deceit are good examples. The main propagandist defense is a liability shift to people, society and government under the irrational but incredibly effective rubric called caveat emptor.

 Finally, some of most effective propaganda includes some truth. Some is even based entirely on truth, or what appears to be truth when viewed as the propagandist presents it. Here, information is often manipulated in how it is presented to make anomalies look like the rule or real truth, not the exception or an illusion. This tactic has been and still is used to effectively fool all kinds people, including scientists, policy makers and social influencers. That scientists can still fall for this tactic is disturbing. Among people, they are the ones who are in theory trained to be more rational about statistics and differentiating truth from illusion.

Sometimes humans just cannot help being human and propagandists know this full well. They are also expert at spotting the susceptible minds in the herd. In essence, they are predators expertly trained to look carefully and painstakingly for and find the minds that are susceptible to their message. The predator plies their poison using subtle charms, e.g., intelligent flattery, and not so subtle charms, e.g., funding for research or outright bribery and fraud. Even self-aware and honest scientists have been tricked and used. Dishonest scientists are even better if they are subtle and smart about their dishonesty.

What is Truth?

Fraud: wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain; a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities

One of the most effective and often low cost tactics the propagandist uses is to fight science with more science. The goals are to create the appearance of controversy and/or doubt about established science showing that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer and other serious diseases. The tobacco industry was extremely successful in creating enough doubt about this that it was able to block meaningful regulations for decades. Big tobacco was absolutely ruthless about this. Not only did the industry create false doubts, they also sometimes flat out lied in their propaganda. To make their propaganda look scientifically sound, they paid ‘experts’ to create an appearance of much more uncertainty and controversy than actually existed in the consensus mainstream. Big tobacco also funded its own research and published data that created doubt about the toxicity of cigarettes while not publishing their studies that confirmed what most scientists already knew and believed. The authors call that tactic selective sharing. I call it at least immoral, evil at worst and in any case, fraud.

Similarly, the chemical industry led by DuPont, mounted a ferocious attack on truth when evidence began to show that the ozone layer in the atmosphere over the south pole developed a hole with hardly any ozone in it. Without ozone, cancer-causing ultraviolet rays from the sun reach the ground. The initial discovery in 1985 was shocking. Many honest scientists did  not believe the data or the analysis, because (1) scientists simply could not believe that ozone levels could fall that far and (2) previous 1970s satellite data detected no loss of ozone in that area. Two experts in satellite data analysis decided to recheck the prior data and discovered that it did show a loss of ozone. The discovery was overlooked because the data analysis software ignored low ozone measurements as anomalies. In the 1970's scientists did not believe that ozone levels could drop as far as they had dropped, so such low measurements were tossed out as being impossible and thus errors in those measurements.

Other 1970's research had shown that CFCs, a common class of widely compounds with over million tons having been made. CFCs could get into the atmosphere and lead to depletion of ozone. Once the meaning of all the data together became clear, the science community was convinced that ozone depletion was real and that CFCs needed to be regulated. That's when DuPont launched its propaganda effort. The major CFC manufacturer, DuPont, bought nationwide ads arguing that it was too soon to regulate CFCs, there was still too much uncertainty in the science and the outright lie that “there is no persuasive evidence” that CFCs can cause ozone depletion. One editorial in an influential chemistry industry publication, Chemical Week, commented: “.... we’re talking about a basically unknown effect on a little-understood phenomenon brought on by a debatable cause. .... One fact is clear: We don’t have the facts. We don’t even know for sure whether there is a problem.”

All of that was blatant lies. There was solid evidence showing the existence of a problem. DuPont was so intent on protecting its revenue stream from making and selling tons of CFCs that it did not hesitate to risk destruction of the ozone layer and attendant bad effects on life on the entire planet. In defending its revenue stream, DuPont propagandists directly attacked the idea of truth itself. In DuPont’s version of reality, there is never enough data to warrant regulation. Knowledge is always uncertain to some extent, and that is true. Nonetheless, when there is enough certainty to act, the propagandists keep attacking truth on the basis of whatever uncertainty there is.

This anti-truth tactic has been used repeatedly by industrial and political propagandists to protect their economic position and/or political power. It is easy to inject uncertainty and doubt in complicated situations, which are common. Therein lies the power of propaganda to block socially useful action. Therein lies some seeds of human self-annihilation.