Title The Debunking Handbook

Author John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky

Year Published 2020

Kind of Book Rationality

How strongly I recommend it 10/10 

My Impressions This pamphlet is very short and can be found online for free. It offers scientifically based directives for how to change belief. It also introduces the cognitive biases that are oftentimes at play when someone's belief is being challenged

Date Read circa 2020

Practical Takeaways

  • Learn how people process information

  • Avoid mentioning the myth you're wishing to correct upfront. Just focus on the facts you wish to communicate

  • Increase people's familiarity with the facts. Don't try to disprove the myth

  • Communicate your core fact in the headline

  • Model for Debunking a Myth when writing an article

  1. Core fact emphasized in the headline

  2. Core facts reinforced in initial text

  3. State the Myth you're debunking

  4. Explaining how the myth misleads

  • Keep your content lean, mean, and easy to read (information that is easy to process is more likely to be accepted as true)

  • Use simple language when making arguments

  • Use short sentences when making arguments

  • End on a strong and simple message that people will remember and tweet to their friends (eg. 97 out of 100 climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming)

  • When you are refuting misinformation only give one argument. Don't give many branching arguments (The Overkill Backfire Effect)

  • Give the reader the option of 3 levels of analysis for your article

1.Basic   short sentences, plain English, graphics

2.Intermediate   more technical language and detailed explanations

3.Advanced

  • Aim to persuade people in the middle not the radical people on the unswayable fringe

  • Anytime you disprove a myth or belief or misinformation, provide an alternative explanation to fill the whole (People prefer an incorrect model over an incomplete model)

  • To disprove misinformation; explain why the misinformation was motivated to promote the myth

  • Use explicit warnings that the upcoming information is false before the mention of a myth, text, or visual cue

  • Don't present information and then say "oh by the way what I told you is totally false" (Mere exposure effect)

  • Emphasize the facts not the myth

  • Use graphics to display the facts you are presenting

Big Ideas

  • People prefer to have an incorrect model of the world over an incomplete model

Surprising Facts

  • Information that is easy to process is more likely to be accepted as true

 

Unknown Terms

Misinformation: "any information that people have acquired that turns out to be incorrect, irrespective of why and how that information was acquired in the first place."-debunking handbook

The Overkill Backfire Effect: The psychological phenomenon where the more counter arguments that are given the less likely they are to sway the person with a conflicting views. This occurs because processing more arguments takes more effort than just considering a few. It could also be the case that the person concludes that if the oppositions side were correct they wouldn't feel the need to give so many arguments as is expressed by Gertrude in Hamlet "The lady doth protest too much methinks"

Disconfirmation Bias: people spend significantly more time and thought actively arguing against opposing arguments

Self-Affirmation Effect: This cognitive bias is the psychological phenomenon whereby people become more receptive to messages and views different to their own after they have spent some time recalling times where they felt good about themselves.