These are confusing times. Disinformation and polarisation rank high in the top 10 global risks, according to a recent World Economic Forum survey. At the same time, there is debate among scholars about exactly how much disinformation and polarisation there is and how both impact. The new US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is convinced that vaccinations would cause autism - a claim that was once brought into the world by fraudulent research by a later convicted doctor and has since been debunked time and again by decades of reliable biomedical research. But even in the Netherlands, there are politicians in power who think science is mainly a leftist hobby.
How can you make up your mind in such circumstances? How do you distinguish reliable information from unreliable one? Who or what should you believe if science is just another opinion, or if you can swap unwelcome facts for alternative ones? VU professors Rik Peels and Jeroen de Ridder come up with a new book, Wat is nou waar?, in which they give scientifically based practical advice to think clearly in confusing times. It will be in bookstores from 18 February.
Research on radicalisation and democracies
Rik Peels has been researching radicalisation and how people form extreme beliefs since 2019. Furthermore, he is working on the cognitive and affective dimensions of narratives in times of crisis, such as pandemics, natural disasters and violent extremism.
Jeroen de Ridder has been doing philosophical and interdisciplinary research since 2016 on how democracies can become smarter, but also on how this can go wrong. Central themes here are mis- and disinformation, expertise and the reliability of science.
Both regularly appear in the media on these topics and are internationally recognised as experts in their fields.
About Rik Peels and Jeroen de Ridder
Rik Peels is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Religion and Theology of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He leads an international research project on the philosophy and theology of radicalisation (see www.extremebeliefs.com). In addition, he is one of the leaders of the Gravity Project Adapt! which investigates how societies can better adapt to crises(https://adapt-academy.nl).
Jeroen de Ridder, as professor of political epistemology at the Faculty of Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, is concerned with how democracies can become smarter.