{"id":1459062,"date":"2024-02-24T02:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-24T07:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1459062"},"modified":"2024-02-24T02:45:00","modified_gmt":"2024-02-24T07:45:00","slug":"misinformation-researcher-sander-van-der-linden-caught-lying-spreading-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/misinformation-researcher-sander-van-der-linden-caught-lying-spreading-misinformation\/1459062\/","title":{"rendered":"Misinformation Researcher Sander Van Der Linden Caught Lying, Spreading Misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Misinformation Researcher Sander Van Der Linden Caught Lying, Spreading Misinformation<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The Disinformation Chronicle<\/a> (subscribe here<\/a>),<\/em><\/p>\n

Sander van der Linden’s webpage at Cambridge University<\/a> says he is an esteemed academic, with prior positions at Princeton and Yale,<\/strong> and has published studies on social influence misinformation, and fake news that place him among the top 1% of all social researchers and the top 2% across all of science.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Pretty much every major media outlet\u2014the New York Times<\/a>,\u00a0BBC<\/a>,\u00a0CNN<\/a>,\u00a0The Economist<\/a>,\u00a0NPR<\/a>, the\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0NBC Nightly News<\/a>\u2014has interviewed van der Linden about his research, while his book \u201cFOOLPROOF: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity\u201d received wide praise.<\/p>\n

But a month back, he climbed down from his lofty academic perch and picked a fight on X with writer Nate Silver and \u2026 Professor van der Linden got crushed:<\/strong> exposed as a liar and a quack who spreads misinformation while editing his personal Wikipedia page<\/a> for the last decade through various single purpose accounts (SPAs) or sock puppets, to burnish his credentials and promote himself and his research.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still getting numerous SPAs on this topic,\u201d one Wikipedia editors noted<\/a> about Sander van der Linden\u2019s biography. \u201cNothing has changed, except they\u2019ve gotten better at not getting caught.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Examined in detail, the van der Linden episode highlights growing evidence that \u201cmisinformation research\u201d is just politics dressed up in academic garb to suppress and censor dissent on controversial topics.<\/p>\n

The kerfuffle kicked off a few weeks back<\/strong> when Sander van der Linden whipped up a brawl on X with Nate Silver, perhaps because Silver has 3.3 million followers and van der Linden has around 15K and was hoping to attract some attention to himself. Days after the spat began, van der Linden was exposed for having edited Wikipedia pages to promote himself<\/a> and his research. But more on that later.<\/p>\n

In the first round, van der Linden promoted an article from years back, calling the possibility of a lab accident a racist conspiracy theory. Virologists and disinformation \u201cexperts\u201d promoted this line for years, until too much evidence squirted out showing that it never made sense. Plus, why is it \u201cracist\u201d to say the pandemic started in a Chinese lab and not in a Chinese market that sells wild animals?<\/p>\n

It’s a narrative that never made any sense and was obviously designed to shut down discussion by labeling people \u201cracist.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cMisinformation has become a completely incoherent concept,\u201d Silver wrote. \u201cA game of \u2018I\u2019m rubber, you\u2019re glue.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, but it goes on.<\/p>\n

Van der Linden then argued there was a \u201cconsensus\u201d that the pandemic started naturally, as opposed to a \u201cconspiracy\u201d that it began in a lab. Again, this highlights how much of disinformation \u201cresearch\u201d is slapping labels on ideas for reasons that are never really explained. It\u2019s rhetorical magic.<\/p>\n

And van der Linden ignores bounties of evidence that virologists ran a propaganda campaign to shout down anyone asking questions about a lab accident<\/strong> by planting papers<\/a> in The Lancet, Emerging Microbes & Infections, and Nature Medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018broad\u2019 definition of misinformation is incoherent,\u201d Silver noted. \u201cWhat is signifies now is an effort to suppress dissent and launder partisan opinions into a false consensus on matters of legitimate controversy. It\u2019s a cynical enterprise, aimed at the gullible.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Van der Linden then doubled down with the \u201cthis is all a racism\u201d argument.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalf the reason Team Misinformation people bug me,\u201d Silver responded, \u201cIs because it\u2019s just so obvious what they\u2019re doing, taking genuinely contentious discussions and stigmatizing the positions that don\u2019t match their politics with the thinnest imaginable reeds of expert authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Oh, but it continued \u2026 for several days. (This guy needs attention, no?)<\/p>\n

Van der Linden then put out a tweet to drag others into the fight, including Peter Hotez, who was caught funding gain-of-function studies<\/a> in Wuhan, researcher Angela Rasmussen<\/a>, and Arizona\u2019s Michael Worobey, whose research on the pandemic\u2019s origin has been noted for \u201ccareless and unprofessional handling of statistical methodology<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

At this point, it became pretty clear that van der Linden was trolling Silver to bring attention to himself\u2014and he got that attention.<\/p>\n

Digging through van der Linden\u2019s Wikipedia page, the X account @triplebankshot noted that Wiki editors had caught van der Linden editing his page<\/a> for the last decade through various sock puppets to create a suite of promotional material.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis guy is a complete fraud \/ pathological liar. He\u2019s been repeatedly banned from Wikipedia over the last 10+ years for using an army of sockpuppets to create articles about himself with self-promotional material.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In the talk section of Sander van der Linden\u2019s Wikipedia page, editors discussed how various purportedly unrelated accounts<\/a> kept adding entries to promote Sander van der Linden, his research, and his book. Here\u2019s some of their findings:<\/p>\n

In 2019, two weeks before\u00a0this paper<\/a>\u00a0was published,\u00a0Whatdoyouknowanyway created an article<\/a>\u00a0about the journal it was published in.<\/p>\n

In July 2020 Meerkat2020\u00a0created<\/a>\u00a0Bad_News_(video_game)<\/a>\u00a0– their only contribution. That contained screenshots which have since been\u00a0deleted on commons<\/a>\u00a0that were originally uploaded by\u00a0Tony_gladstone1<\/a>\u00a0who was blocked as part of the SPI.<\/p>\n

In September 2020 Jibberjabber20 made\u00a0various unsourced<\/a>\u00a0changes to the biography which wouldn’t have been known publicly.<\/p>\n

In late 2020\/early 2021, Youshallnotpass001 made two major edits to the biography\u00a0[18]<\/a>\u00a0[19]<\/a>\u00a0which created a substantial section on their\u00a0research contributions<\/a>. They also\u00a0argued against merging<\/a>\u00a0Gateway belief model<\/a>\u00a0(which had been redirected to the biography in 2018).<\/p>\n

In February this year, AntiMusk\u00a0added promotional information<\/a>\u00a0about his newly-published\u00a0Foolproof<\/em>\u00a0book and also removed information which would not have been known to the casual independent observer (director of studies in psychological and behavioural sciences…)<\/p>\n

In May this year, Booklover 2023 created\u00a0Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity<\/a><\/em>\u00a0with their first edit after being auto-confirmed. It contains a\u00a0glowing biography<\/a>\u00a0of van der Linden and they also\u00a0uploaded<\/a>\u00a0a high-resolution (1500 x 2300) version of the book cover which is not present in the source that they linked to, nor am I able to find it through reverse image searches. They were explicitly asked whether they had a COI by\u00a0Jimfbleak<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0stated<\/a>\u00a0There is no conflict of interest. (Note that they refer to\u00a0Against Empathy<\/a><\/em>\u00a0in that same post, which\u00a0AntiMusk<\/a>also edited).<\/p>\n

The editors concluded that these accounts were being generated just to promote Sander van der Linden, meaning van der Linden was orchestrating these accounts to craft propaganda about himself.<\/p>\n

Some final thoughts from Silver about the whole Sander van der Linden episode and the silly academic discipline of \u201cmisinformation research.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 02\/23\/2024 – 21:45<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bRead More<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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