CIRCE, the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative

Sander van der Linden, Ph.D., is Professor of Social Psychology and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. He is an ISI Highly Citer Researcher and has published over 100 papers, many on the topic of how to best counter misinformation. His research is regularly featured in outlets such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, and the BBC and he has been described by Fast Company Design as one “four heroes who are defending digital democracy online”. He co-created the fake news game, Bad News, and regularly advises governments and social media companies on how to combat misinformation. Before joining Cambridge, he held academic positions at Princeton, Yale, and the LSE.  

https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/sander-van-der-linden

Dr. Seema Yasmin is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a medical doctor at Stanford and UCLA. She directs Stanford's Health Communication Initiative and serves as a medical analyst for CNN. She's the author of What the Fact?! Finding the Truth in All the Noise and Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, WIRED, Scientific American, and the BBC. She writes poetry, teaches crisis communications at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, and is a sought-after keynote speaker.

https://seemayasmin.com/

Stephan Lewandowsky is one of the world’s leading cognitive immunologists. He conducts research at the University of Bristol and has published more than 200 scholarly articles and books, including The Debunking Handbook, The COVID-19 Communication Handbook, and The Conspiracy Thinking Handbook. He explores people’s responses to misinformation and propaganda. Why do people reject well-established scientific facts? Is our online information ecosystem conducive to democracy? Professor Lewandowsky has received multiple awards for his research.

cogsciwa.com/

Lee McIntyre is a Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and a Lecturer in Ethics at Harvard Extension School. Lee's bestselling books include Post-Truth and How to Talk to a Science Denier, along with eleven other works of fiction and nonfiction. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Newsweek, Scientific American, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and numerous other popular venues.

https://leemcintyrebooks.com/

Claire Wardle is one of the world’s leading experts on misinformation and public health. She co-authored the foundational report Information Disorder: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policy for the Council of Europe and directs the Information Futures Lab. In 2015, she co-founded the nonprofit First Draft, a pioneer in innovation, research, and practice in the field of misinformation. Over the past decade, she has developed an organization-wide training program for the BBC, been a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center for Media and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School, and been the Research Director at the Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University.  

https://vivo.brown.edu/display/cwardle

John is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub. His research focus is understanding and countering misinformation about climate change, with an emphasis on using critical thinking to build resilience. He co-authored the college textbooks Climate Change: Examining the Facts and Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis, as well as the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand.

https://www.monash.edu/mcccrh/people/john-cook

Andy Norman is the award-winning author of Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think. His work has appeared in Scientific American, Psychology Today, Psychiatric Times, Skeptic, Free Inquiry, and The Humanist. He has appeared on NPR, The Joe Rogan Experience, and the BBC’s Naked Scientist. His research illuminates the workings of the mind’s immune system. He champions the emerging science of mental immunity as the antidote to disinformation, propaganda, hate, and division. He is the founder of the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative (CIRCE) and Infodemic Solutions.
www.andynorman.org 

Maarten Boudry is a philosopher of science and current holder of the Etienne Vermeersch Chair of Critical Thinking at Ghent University. His most recent book is Science Unlimited? On the Challenges of Scientism, co-edited with Massimo Pigliucci. His academic research deals with cultural evolution, irrational belief systems, atheism, and naturalism, evolutionary epistemology, reasoning fallacies, and conspiracy theories.

 www.maartenboudry.be

Karin is a nationally-recognized expert in political discourse. She is a social scientist who teaches the art of fruitful political conversation. She created the New York Times' Angry Uncle Bot and founded and runs Smart Politics. Since the 2016 election, Dr. Tamerius has focused on using therapeutic communication skills in political discussion, teaching activists how to depolarize conflicts and effectively share their message. She studied political psychology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at the University of Michigan and trained in psychiatry as a resident at UC San Francisco. Her work has been featured in a wide range of media outlets, including NPR, Fox and Friends, Business Insider, and Mother Jones.

https://www.joinsmart.org/media/

Melanie Trecek-King is a true pioneer. Years ago, she recognized the need for science instruction focused less on facts and more on how to think like a scientist. She created a novel course that uses pseudoscience, bad science, and science denial to engage students, teach science literacy, and develop critical thinking acumen. That course—Science for Life—is now being taught at other institutions and is part of an effort to revolutionize science education. Trecek-King created Thinking Is Power to empower innovative educators and enable the general public. 

https://thinkingispower.com/about/

Steije Hofhuis is a cultural historian at Utrecht University, The Netherlands, who became intrigued by the idea of “mind parasites”. In his own research he examines European witch persecutions as an example of a virus-like cultural phenomenon that spread at the expense of its human hosts.

https://www.uu.nl/staff/STHofhuis

Jon Roozenbeek is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. His research focuses on misinformation, vaccine hesitancy, online extremism and inoculation theory. As part of his research, he co-developed the award-winning fake news games Bad News, Harmony Square and Go Viral. 

https://www.sdmlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk/staff/dr-jon-roozenbeek

Anthony Magnabosco is Executive Director and co-founder of Street Epistemology International, an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting the practice of street epistemology, a conversational technique that helps people reflect on their belief formation process in a productive way. Anthony has been promoting this practice for nearly a decade, and uploads examples of street epistemology to his YouTube channel.

https://streetepistemology.com/

Anita focuses on information-induced pathologies. Drawing on the work of Adrian Restian, this research explores how language and ideas can contribute to mental illness, psychological disorders, and cognitive dysfunction. The main interest lies in the concept of informational pathogens—harmful messages and narratives circulating within the socio-informational space, which undermine individual mental health and adversely affect collective decision-making.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/anita-maria-lewandowska-54739935a/

David R. Samson, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He studies health and cognition in both human and non-human primates. The author of Our Tribal Future, David is also leading an effort to validate a survey instrument for measuring mental immunity, the ability to spot and ward off misinformation. 

 
https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/david-samson/

David Sloan Wilson is SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Binghamton University and president of Prosocial World, whose mission is “to consciously evolve a world that works for all”. His work represents a paradigm shift in evolutionary thinking and highlights the necessity of conscious evolution. David develops tools for positive change efforts in the real world. His recent books include This View of Life, Prosocial, and Atlas Hugged.  

https://www.darwinianrevolution.com/

Computational Social Scientist Kathleen M. Carley, Ph.D., is a Professor in the School for Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, and director of the university-wide center for Informed Democracy and Social-cybersecurity (IDeaS). She teaches courses in network science and simulation. Her award winning software, ORA, is used for assessing social media and tracking influence campaigns. 

https://www.isri.cmu.edu/people/core-faculty/carley-kathleen.html

Steve Gilbert received an M.S. in Experimental Psychology from Northeastern University and a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He is Board Certified in Counseling Psychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology. In the past, Steve has served as President of the Minnesota Psychological Association and chair of the MPA Ethics Committee. As an administrator and clinician in university counseling centers, he focused on emerging adulthood—a developmental period in which personal values and beliefs are explored and tested. 

Ralph Hertwig is a cognitive psychologist and a behavioral decision scientist. He is the director of the Center for Adaptive Rationality at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. His research examines models of bounded rationality, the importance of learning from experience, and ways to change people’s behavior for the better by boosting their cognitive and motivational competences. He has co-authored and edited four books including
Deliberate Ignorance: Choosing Not to Know (MIT Press). He is the recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Germany’s most prestigious research award. 

https://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/staff/ralph-hertwig

Dr. Gale M. Sinatra is the Crocker Professor of Education and Psychology at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, where she serves as the Associate Dean for Research. She received her BS, MS, and PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She heads the Motivated Change Research Lab and studies STEM learning and belief change. She recently chaired the APA Climate Change Task Force. She is a Fellow of AERA and APA and a member of the National Academy of Education. She is the co-author (with Barbara Hofer) of Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It.

https://rossier.usc.edu/faculty-research/directory/gale-sinatra

David Robert Grimes is the author of Good Thinking: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us all at Risk and How Critical thinking Can Save the World. He's a mathematical modeler, medical researcher, and has a keen interest in the public understanding of science. He has written for the Guardian, Scientific American, The New York Times, The BBC, and the Financial Times. His advocacy on behalf of science made him a joint recipient of the 2014 John Maddox Prize awarded by the journal Nature and the nonprofit Sense about Science. David is also a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. 

www.davidrobertgrimes.com

Barry Mauer, PhD, is on the cutting edge of research into cognitive immunity and the threats posed to it by the intersection of illiberal forces and electronic media. Barry is the author of Deadly Delusions: Right-Wing Death Cult and “The Cognitive Immune System: The Mind’s Ability to Dispel Pathological Beliefs.” Barry collaborated on the DARPA-funded project, “Deep Agent: A Framework for Information Spread and Evolution in Social Networks.” Barry teaches symposiums on cognitive immunity including “The Age of Mass Delusion,” “Why Are People Fooled?” and “Propaganda and Pseudoscience.” 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barry-Mauer

Michael Shermer, Ph.D., is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the podcast The Michael Shermer Show, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. He is the author of Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain.  https://michaelshermer.com/

Denial Pimentel, PhD, is an assistant professor of science education at the University of Alabama. He completed his PhD in science education, learning sciences, and technology design at Stanford University, where he also received a graduate certificate in science, technology, and society with a focus on data and society. His research explores how science education can promote public understanding of and engagement with science in an increasingly digital world. He studies teaching and learning of science-related civic issues, data and science media literacies, and the nature of science in society.