Amazon and YouTube Are Making Money From the Dangerous QAnon Conspiracy Theory

By Jacob Weindling | March 4, 2019 | 3:30pm QAnon is a dangerous conspiracy theory that doubles as a call to violence in that its adherents falsely believe that baby blood sustains a global pedophilia ring. To them, that’s what the Mueller investigation is really about, and Trump and Mueller are actually teaming up to […]

The complex reasons why Republicans baby boomers are more likely to share #fakenews on Facebook

Published: Jan 20, 2019 4:28 p.m. ET By Quentin Forttrell Experts say conservatives aged 65 and over tread an ideological path that goes all the way back to childhood Social media doesn’t help people differentiate what is real from what is fake, but “fake news” has been used by social scientists to describe fictional articles […]

Our oceans broke heat records in 2018 and the consequences are catastrophic

Rising temperatures can be charted back to the late 1950s, and the last five years were the five hottest on record Last year was the hottest ever measured, continuing an upward trend that is a direct result of manmade greenhouse gas emissions. The key to the measurements is the oceans. Oceans absorb more than 90% […]

Quantum mechanics explains efficiency of photosynthesis

January 9, 2014 , University College London Plant cells with visible chloroplasts (from a moss, Plagiomnium affine) Credit: Wikipedia Light-gathering macromolecules in plant cells transfer energy by taking advantage of molecular vibrations whose physical descriptions have no equivalents in classical physics, according to the first unambiguous theoretical evidence of quantum effects in photosynthesis published today […]

Footnotes to Plato | Søren Kierkegaard: The blessing of despair

Clare Carlisle surveys the ‘slippery, often baffling’ writings of a philosopher ‘remarkably sensitive to the perversity, paradoxes and irony of the human condition’ CLARE CARLISLE Footnotes to Plato is a TLS Online series appraising the works and legacies of the great thinkers and philosophers Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) thought, wrote and lived as both a philosopher and a spiritual […]

The psychology of Qanon: Why do seemingly sane people believe bizarre conspiracy theories? (NBC 2018)

The fear that evil forces conspire to hurt good people is deeply rooted in the human psyche. Trump supporters wear clothing referencing the Qanon conspiracy theory.Scott Olson / Getty Images Aug. 13, 2018, 10:36 AM PDT By Jan-Willem van Prooijen, Associate professor, experimental and applied psychology, VU Amsterdam A secret civil war is going on […]

The effectiveness of short‐format refutational fact‐checks

Ullrich K. H. Ecker, et al First published: 02 March 2019 Fact‐checking has become an important feature of the modern media landscape. However, it is unclear what the most effective format of fact‐checks is. Some have argued that simple retractions that repeat a false claim and tag it as false may backfire because they boost […]