You CAN Handle the Truth

Review by Bill Doughty––

You can taste the tension in the courtroom. Before the Navy lieutenant (j.g.) JAG prosecutor, played by Tom Cruise, uses verbal jiu jitsu and gets his witness (Jack Nicholson) to blurt out a confession, the Marine captain defense attorney (Kevin Bacon) attempts to psychologically inoculate the jury.

The scene is from the gripping Rob Reiner movie A Few Good Men, which also stars Demi Moore and Kiefer Sutherland as well as  numerous other actors portraying Marines and Sailors. The scene, written by Aaron Sorkin, is presented in the final chapter of “Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity” by Sander van der Linden (W.W. Norton, 2023).

And it’s perfect.

Kevin Bacon as Capt Jack Ross primes the jury with what they will hear from the prosecution. He spins the narrative and attempts to trump the argument with “alternative facts.”

The scene illustrates some of the science-based conclusions presented in this important book about critical thinking and the dangers of misinformation, disinformation, and manipulation. Van der Linden shows how thinking people anywhere can identify conspiracies and manipulation and inoculate themselves.

While reading this book I thought of outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley, who took seriously his oath to defend the Constitution and who also swore to tell the truth [the whole truth and nothing but the truth] many times in testimony to Congress (top photo).

When confronted by Republicans about Marxist “wokeness” in the military and his wanting to learn more about the risk of extremism in the ranks and the effects of conspiracy-mongers such as QAnon, Milley explained his position with rational clarity.

Milley, in effect, wanted to be inoculated by reading and understanding the issues. “I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist,” he said. “So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding, about the country for which we are here to defend?”

Challenged by a Republican representative about preventing white nationalists from joining the military, Milley said it was important to be well-read and open-minded and to try to understand why people attacked the Capitol in the January 6, 2021 insurrection. “I want to understand white rage – and I’m white,” Milley told the committee.

Milley famously communicated with his military counterpart in China after the J6 attack to allay fears and reassure a near-peer competitor that the United States had no desire for war. Milley is set to retire this Friday after 43 years of service in uniform. Milley’s dad, by the way, was a Navy Corpsman in World War II, and his mom served as a nurse with the Navy’s WAVES.

Trump

Last Friday, former President Donald Trump wrote about Milley’s retirement on his social media platform, suggesting Milley perhaps should be executed.

Regarding Milley's coming retirement, Trump wrote: “This will be a time for all citizens of the USA to celebrate! This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!” Trump wrote. At least one Republican representative, Paul Gosar of Arizona, agrees with Trump, calling Milley a "traitor," and also suggesting death by hanging.

Since pre-internet days, the misinformation stakes have become higher and the dangers of misinformation, manipulation, and outright threats have become greater. “The perverse incentives of social media” rely on promoting fear and profiting from extremism and division within society.

In “Foolproof,” van der Linden presents his findings in a convincing style. Throughout the book, he uses the metaphor of disease: viruses, contagions, and inoculation. And he presents actual experiments, examples, and incidents.

For example, “The lawyer defending the Capitol rioter Anthony Antonio was not wrong when he suggested the people can catch misinformation much like a disease,” van der Linden writes.

He describes his book this way in the prologue:

“In an era increasingly filled with half-truths, fake news and misinformation, I am not here to tell you what to believe. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, perhaps you can think of this book as a humble servant in your own search for truth. Andy Norman, a philosopher at Carnegie Mellon University, refers to me as a ‘cognitive immunologist.’ I quite like this description of my field of research: I study mental defenses of the mind. I want to provide you with a guide to how your brain grapples with the onslaught of fact and fiction, a toolbox to help sniff out attempts to influence your opinion amidst the ‘dark arts of manipulation.’ A vaccine, if you will, against misinformation. Just as antigens produce an immune response in the body, psychological antigens can help build resistance to fake news. I offer eleven such antigens in this book to boost our immunity.”

van der Linden

But, he admits, “There is no psychological cure (that I know of) that unravels or counteracts the fully developed conspiratorial worldview. And it’s highly contagious.” Fully one-third of the population, he says, supports conspiracies.

People can easily fall into “rabbit holes” that have become deeper and darker thanks to Twitter (X), WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube, where “millions of people can be exposed to viral misinformation in a matter of days if not minutes.”

Examples of conspiracy theories cited in “Foolproof”: Covid-19 (various related to origins, spread, and cures), Princess Diana’s death, JFK’s assassination, flat-earthers, Holocaust-related, NASA’s moon landing, Osama bin Laden, Pizzagate, 5G phone masts, Sandy Hook as fake, Shakespeare’s sonnets as a code, Malaysian Airlines, reptilian conspiracy theory, governments hiding aliens, vaccinations linked to autism, Trump’s “stolen election claim,” and climate change as still debatable.

An interesting example of the use of misinformation comes in the climate change debate, ignited by GOP analyst Frank Luntz. Eight years before Luntz performed as guest speaker at the Navy’s 2010 public affairs conference in Baltimore he was a political consultant for Republican George W. Bush.

In 2002 Luntz wrote a confidential memorandum advising Bush on how to cast doubt on the findings on climate change. Despite the fact that 97 percent of scientists believed in the link between human-produced carbon and climate change, Luntz advised focusing on the 3 percent and highlighting the wedge. Luntz wrote: “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

Van der Linden compare’s Luntz’s success on behalf of the fossil fuel industry to some of the same misinformation and science-denial techniques used by the tobacco companies decades earlier: obfuscate, confuse, cast doubt on the scientific evidence because it matters more what people feel (or want to believe) than what they think.

“Foolproof” also delves into communist North Korea’s “brainwashing” attempts of Korean War POWs, nearly two dozen of whom chose to remain in North Korea.

Van der Linden explores the origins and continuation of anti vaccination conspiracy theory involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And he discusses how the weapons of mass destruction conspiracy led to a tragic war in Iraq under George W. Bush.

Van der Linden offers easily understood acronyms anyone can employ to inject skepticism and critical thinking when they are confronted with a conspiracy.

CONSPIRE translates to being aware of:

    Contradictory logic

    Overriding suspicion

    Nefarious intentions

    “Something must be wrong”

    Persecuted victims

    Immune to evidence

    RE-interpreting random events into a connected story

DEPICT shows the six degrees of manipulation:

    Discrediting (“fake news,” “fake election”)

    Emotion (get people agitated and promote fear)

    Polarization (false amplification to drive people apart)

    Impersonation (fake credentials or sources)

    Conspiracy (secret cabals or government groups)

    Trolling (such as by the Russian Internet Research agency, a full-time round-the-clock BS machine)

Van der Linden and his researchers developed a free online game — www.getbadnews.com ––to act as a “vaccine” to help people who wish to psychologically inoculate themselves. Reading “Foolproof” itself serves as a good vaccination.

With his diagrams and references to “A Few Good Men,” Mark Twain, and Harry Potter, van der Linden presents an entertaining but serious argument for getting inoculated against misinformation, disinformation, and manipulation in 2023 and moving forward.

This is an especially important book as we face more nefarious techniques ahead involving artificial intelligence, deep-fakes, conspiracies, and polarized media platforms –– designed and deployed to control our perception of what is happening now and what is yet to come in government, elections, and courtrooms.

Sander van der Linden, Ph.D., is Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge.