Sara Goudarzi
In 2020, as COVID-19 began to spread around the globe, theories surrounding the pandemic also started to circulate. One such supposition—as absurd as it might seem—was the idea that there was a correlation between 5G cellular telephone towers and the increased number of infections. This utterly false idea began to trend on social media and spread through messaging apps. Thousands, including celebrities and politicians, circulated this complete falsehood, leading to the burning of dozens of wireless communication towers in Europe. Although misinformation isn’t new, the rate with which it spreads is unprecedented, much as biological pathogens now travel much more quickly than in the past via today’s high-speed transportation systems.
But what if there was a way to protect people against misinformation viruses? Sander van der Linden, professor of social psychology at the University of Cambridge and director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, wrote the book FOOLPROOF: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity; in it, he explains that there are ways to build immunity against falsehoods, much as vaccines that protect against pathogens.
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