On Disinformation

Included in The Next Big Idea Club’s August 2023 Must-Read Books list

“This brief but impactful book offers trenchant commentary on the current war on truth and workable solutions to protect democracy in an increasingly chaotic world…thoughtful and illuminating.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy, a new book by Lee McIntyre, captures some of the current alarm. His book is a pocket-size polemic warning of ‘truth killers’ running ‘a coordinated campaign’ intended ‘to spread disinformation out to the masses—in order to foment doubt, division and distrust—and create an army of deniers.’ McIntyre, a philosopher and research fellow at Boston University, points to conspiratorial falsehoods about Covid vaccines and the 2020 election. It’s not that accurate information about the vaccines and the election was unavailable — it’s that it was competing against a fire hose of falsehoods made infinitely easier to disseminate on social media and the internet.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Most scientists have an enduring belief that even if scientific truth is not embraced in the short term, it will be eventually. Lee McIntyre’s new manifesto, On Disinformation, packaged—like Mao’s—in a little red book, urges those who care about scientific truth and democracy to make a stand now rather than wait for society to come around.”
—Science

“The philosopher Lee McIntyre, author of several books about disinformation and the scientific method, has written a short prescriptive polemic…The subject of On Disinformation is not QAnon as such but the related phenomenon of “denialism”. The two are linked for the obvious reason that denying the realities of man-made climate change, Covid-19 or the Biden election are essential if you are to posit a conspiracy by the deep state or the Clintons to foist these “false” ideas on an accepting, sheeplike citizenry.”
—The Financial Times

“On Disinformation follows hot on the heels of McIntyre’s How to Talk to a Science Denier, in which the professional philosopher illustrated how difficult it is to argue with your enemy unless you understand how they think; in which he recommended taking even the most bizarre of opposing viewpoints seriously, if only to level the playing field.In what feels very much like the next logical instalment of his discourse on living in a post-truth world, On Disinformation builds on McIntyre’s earlier work by examining how ‘strategic denialism’ is created, amplified and accepted into fringe orthodoxy.”
—E&T, Engineering and Technology

Lee McIntyre is Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University. Formerly Executive Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, he has taught philosophy at Colgate University, Boston University, Simmons University, Tufts Experimental College, and Harvard Extension School.

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