No lie — this is an important book. Disinformation helps fuel the climate crisis, as well as so many other problems we face today, from election denial and anti-vaccine attitudes to QAnon and anti-LGBTQ policies. Countering these threats require everyone to operate on the same baseline of truth, and that also requires understanding why mistruth is so easily duplicated from brain to brain. Reading this book will help you to fight the tendrils of misinformation working their way into your perceptions, as well as enable you to prevent them from reaching others. Whether that will help your already infected crazy uncle remains to be seen, but the fact is that this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the future of truth.

One of my responsibilities as an English teacher is to help my students build their media literacy skills. In the past couple of years, I have become increasingly convinced, in fact, that media literacy is the most essential skill English classes can cover. The deluge of disinformation and morass of misinformation out there is staggering. Throw in the challenges of deepfakes, and, well, it’s starting to get depressing, how difficult it is to evaluate the quality of information that comes across my feeds. For a long time, I’ve been using the Bad News Game in my classroom to help my adult learners understand how misinformation works. When I was approved via NetGalley to read an eARC of Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity, I didn’t know at the time that Sander van der Linden was one of the researchers behind the game! It’s neat to hear him talk more about how the game was designed and other findings about fake news.

In the first part of the book, van der Linden discusses the current state of research into misinformation and how it affects us from a cognitive science point of view. Part 2 of the book look at the historical spread of misinformation, from ancient Rome to modern times, and introduces concepts like filter bubbles and echo chambers. Part 3 explains the concept that van der Linden and his team have been researching (building upon older research from the mid-twentieth century)—a psychological vaccine that inoculates us against misinformation. The Bad News Game is an example of such a vaccine in action.

My main takeaways from this book (some of which I already knew but which van der Linden explained in more detail): our brains are susceptible to misinformation because of cognitive biases we evolved to deal with environments far different from the ones we find ourselves in today; merely debunking or fact-checking misinformation is seldom very effective; pre-bunking or inoculating people against misinformation can be very effective, but the duration of that efficacy can be variable.

Some of what van der Linden says here might seem obvious to anyone with two brain cells to rub together. What makes Foolproof so valuable is the way that he grounds these perhaps obvious ideas in actual research stretching back decades. Reading this book reminded me of the incredible power of science: without this research, we would be in a much worse off place than we are today. This book gave me hope and made me more optimistic for our future. As grave a threat as misinformation plagues pose, there are solutions out there.

Although van der Linden briefly touches on the role of artificial intelligence (such as deepfakes) in the book, he doesn’t mention generative AI like ChatGPT. This is likely because the book went to press just before ChatGPT and its competitors launched into the limelight. How’s that for timing? While a great deal of what van der Linden says about spotting misinformation applies to these tools as well, I still have questions. ChatGPT and other large language models open up the door to the possibility of generating so much garbage online that accurate information diminishes simply by volume alone. I’m curious if this new dimension to misinformation spread affects van der Linden’s recommendations or his team’s findings at all.

Foolproof is a fascinating and edifying story of using science to push back against one of the most pressing issues in our modern society. Highly recommended for tech people, scholars, scientists, and anyone interested in how misinformation spreads and how we can fight it.

A timely study on how misinformation spreads and methods people can use to try and avoid it. Clearly written with many examples and diagrams, readers will gain an understanding of how misinformation might appear, particularly via social media, and how to limit its influence. Sander uses a vaccine metaphor to explain how people can inoculate themselves and gain a level of immunity, or at least become more cognizant of what they consume and take an active role in not spreading misleading information. He acknowledges that it won't be completely effective and needs regular boosters, but it can help weed out the worst of the misinformation and help people evaluate what they read.

⭐⭐⭐.5/5 - Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity is a mouthful of a title - but with such an intriguing goal.

What I found most interesting is that I assumed this book would be politically charged - and I quickly realized it wasn't. Foolproof is one long research article wrapped in common sense and book bindings (or an ePub file if you're reading on your Kindle, lol)!

Somewhere between a psychological dissection of how social media plays on our minds and a guidebook on how to navigate how we personally process of information, Foolproof is a great read! The main point I carried is that social media, news, and all of these outlets have a place in modern society - but it's up to you how you let yourself be affected.

**The hardest part about reading non-fiction, especially scientific or psychological theory-heavy tomes is that it's easy to get bogged down in the minutiae. As a scientist myself - it's easy for me to remember my 'training' to look for main points and use the details to confirm what I think are the overarching themes. If you haven't read much non-fiction or books with a lot of research mentioned, Foolproof could be a great way to start because it's not terribly long!

If you're looking for your next non-fiction read - Foolproof would be a great book to snag. (Especially as an audiobook! I think this one would be good to listen to in the car because that way, the scientific jargon wouldn't slow you down. You'd get more of an overall picture!)