A Psychological Vaccine Against Fake News

1 Nicolaas Vroom	A Psychological Vaccine Against Fake News	Thursday 13 October 2022
2 Nicolaas Vroom	Re :A Psychological Vaccine Against Fake News	Friday 14 October 2022

A Psychological Vaccine Against Fake News
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https://groups.google.com/g/sci.physics.research/c/rf6a1AyvS0s
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This posting is a reaction op the article: "A Psychological Vaccine Against Fake News".
To read the article select this link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349693716_A_Psychological_Vaccine_Against_Fake_News Written by Rakoen Maertens and Sander van der Linde. Both from University of Cambridge UK. We Read:
"Despite years of research in cognitive and behavioural science on how to curb the impact of misinformation, a magic bullet solution for the problem has not been found. The classical method is known as debunking and entails issuing a correction after people have already been exposed to a falsehood."
And:
"This leads to the natural question of whether we can prevent misinformation from taking root in the first place? In the 1960s, American psychologist William McGuire developed a framework known as inoculation theory, which closely follows the biomedical analogy. In brief, McGuire posited that — similar to a biomedical vaccine — the 'cognitive immune system' needs to become familiar with a weakened version of the 'virus' in order for it to develop 'mental antibodies'."
To read more about 'inoculation theory' select this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoculation_theory

IMO the most important weapon against fake news, or to decide what is true or false is education. Explain in as simple and as clear as possible language how something functions or operates, backed up by means of experiments. A nice document to read about vaccines is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine

Regarding vaccines it is important:
First to describe the disease against which the vaccine protects you.
Secondly to describe in as much detail as possible how the vaccine performs this task, backed up by means of experiments.
Thirdly test that the vaccine actual protects you. This is dangerous for a completely new vaccine. This is extra difficult for a vaccine that is an update of a previous vaccine.

Regarding fake news and the inoculation theory.
First describe in detail what fake news is in general.
Secondly describe how inoculation theory in general operates or functions and how it decides what is true and what is false. (Or right and wrong) IMO to answer this question in general is almost impossible.

Instead of 'in general' you can also read: 'in case of a virus' How difficult it is to evaluate all the news about the corona pandemic becomes clear when you study face masks.
Why was there so much mistrust about the use of face mask, while face mask where already in use during the Spanish flue? The use of face mask is almost the first line of defence against the spreading of almost any infection or contagious disease.

In the article the following example is discussed: "In particular, we used a screenshot of a real website that hosts a bogus petition allegedly signed by thousands of scientists claiming that global warming is a hoax" Next, we read:
"The warning and weakened dose are meant to trigger people’s vigilance and attention (to start the production of mental antibodies), and the message offers people concrete ways to resist the misinformation. After people were inoculated, participants were exposed to a full dose of the misinformation." This raises two important questions:
1) What are these mental antibodies?
2) What does inoculation mean in this example.

My conclusion is that in general to investigate what is right or wrong requires a detailed scientific investigation. Except if people on purpose produce misinformation.

Nicolaas Vroom https://www.nicvroom.be/

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