Risk Factors for Autism Spectrum Disorder: What We Already Know | Defend Public Health https://www.defendpublichealth.org/resource/risk-factors-autism-spectrum-disorder-what-we-already-know-scientific-evidence-0

A #misinformation #vaccine if you will.

“#RFKJr. is gearing up to release a report on autism spectrum disorder (ASD). He claims that scientists haven’t studied the “root causes”. Therefore, #DefendPublicHealth has released our report summarizing what is known about risk factors for ASD from the 30,000+ scientific papers on this topic.

Vaccines aren’t one of them”

#FYI #USA #MicrobeTV #MASA #MakeAmericaSaneAgain #RFKjr #vaccinate #vaccines #antivax #antivaxx #disinformation #misinformation #antiscience #fascism #stopfascism #VincentRacaniello #CDC

"Vincent summarizes a recent NY Times Guest Essay by seven former CDC Directors, entitled "We ran the CDC: Kennedy is endangering every American's health"."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APrSp9M5BzY

China now mandates labeling of all AI-generated content (text, images, video) under new CAC regulation
Platforms like WeChat & Douyin must apply visible tags + metadata watermarks
Goal: fight fraud, copyright abuse, & misinformation online
Part of the 2025 “Qinglang” internet cleanup campaign

https://www.indexbox.io/blog/china-enforces-mandatory-ai-content-labeling-for-all-platforms/

"Critical thinking need(ed) ... to spot disinformation & misinformation during the 2026 Scottish Parliament election."

Politicians, social media, and bots are promoting false info.

Educators want critical thinking to be taught at school from the age of 5.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/democracy-under-threat-from-disinformation-at-2026-scottish-parliament-election-5287045

#CriticalThinking #Misinformation #disinformation #socialmedia #politics #bots #tech #education @edutooters @communicationscholars

In my first FIDO Alliance blog post, I cut through the noise around “passkeys being hacked” and clarify that the real issues lie in compromised environments, not in the technology. For product teams and leaders evaluating authentication strategies, the takeaway is straightforward: passkeys remain one of our strongest defenses against phishing and credential theft — when they’re implemented thoughtfully and paired with good security hygiene.

If you’ve been hesitant because of scary headlines, I hope this helps turn things back to reality: passkeys are here to stay, and they’re a major step forward.

Read the full thoughts here: https://fidoalliance.org/passkeys-are-not-broken-the-conversation-about-them-often-is

#rumors #misinformation #history #France

As it turns out, the idea of information spreading like a virus is not just an apt metaphor—information virality can also be scientifically modeled in the same way as an actual virus.

One of the better known 'viral outbreaks' of misinformation in history is the 'Great Fear of 1789.' In a matter of only a couple of weeks, between July 20, 1789 and August 6, 1789, rumors that the aristocracy were planning to starve the peasants spread throughout France, leading to panic, unrest, and riots.

While this conspiracy was not based in fact, this time period was rife with unrest between the peasantry and aristocracy and the event played a key role in the French Revolution, eventually leading to the collapse of feudalism.

Much debate and confusion has surrounded the manner in which the Great Fear spread so quickly. However, in a new study, published in Nature, a team of researchers have taken a different approach at figuring out this mystery by modeling the spread of the rumors circulated during the Great Fear of 1789 with the same epidemiological approach used to study the transmission of viruses.'

https://archive.ph/PW9EF#selection-981.0-1001.244

"The study maps the trajectory of misinformation across four phases—introduction, acceleration, saturation, and stabilization—and classifies adopters into distinct categories reflective of their engagement with false content. This framework offers a nuanced understanding of how misinformation diffuses within both social and algorithmically mediated networks. This study builds on diffusion models by including how emotions and platform algorithms drive misinformation, helping us better understand how it spreads in today’s digital world. The findings yield actionable implications for policymakers, platform designers, and educators seeking to curb the spread of false information."

#misinformation
#disinformation
#DigitalSociology

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-025-02575-5

"Asking ordinary Americans to perform grueling feats of strength is unlikely to make a dent in the obesity rate, no matter how tough the talk.

Similarly, most of MAHA’s flashiest food initiatives aren’t supported by good science, and would do little to improve health."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/rfk-jr-repeating-michelle-obama-113000975.html

Warning: there’s a bit of swearing in this. It’s hard to avoid given the subject. I wrote it in response to being confronted by someone impersonating another author on Substack.

https://open.substack.com/pub/suswatibasu/p/who-the-hell-trusts-the-internet?r=5rxnp&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

MON SEP/15: I'll be at the British Computer Society (BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT) London, presenting observations from my infop/misinfo investigations, with OSINT/SOCMINT basics.
Details and registration (in-person or online) at https://www.bcs.org/events-calendar/2025/september/hybrid-disinformation-in-practice-tips-and-tools/

12-14 November - 2025 European Public Health Conference Conference themes: #EconomyOfWellbeing #Sustainability #Inclusivity #Diversity #Misinformation #Disinformation #PlanetaryHealth #CommercialDeterminantsOfHealth #PoliticalDeterminantsOfHealth #HealthWorkforce

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:tm5dktqb7jpzclqaxznuff2y/post/3lup3situbs2w

#FYI #USA #MicrobeTV #BeyondTheNoise #MASA #MakeAmericaSaneAgain #RFKjr #vaccinate #vaccines #antivax #antivaxx #disinformation #misinformation #antiscience #fascism #stopfascism #VincentRacaniello #PaulOffit #covid19 #vaccination

Beyond The Noise #80 Dr. Paul Offit once again unpacks the malicious lies of RFKjr and their consequences

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO9inD6ASxY

Ukrainska Pravda: From 12 September Russia prepares “massive wave” of disinformation – Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence chief. “Kyrylo Budanov, Head of Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU), has stated that during the upcoming joint Russian–Belarusian exercises Zapad-2025, the active phase of which begins on 12 September, a large-scale information attack is expected.”

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/09/01/ukrainska-pravda-from-12-september-russia-prepares-massive-wave-of-disinformation-ukraines-defence-intelligence-chief/

Wishful thinking, outright lies — #Ukraine dismisses #Russia's claims of battlefield success

Russia’s 2025 spring–summer campaign has ended with “almost nothing,” Ukraine’s General Staff said on Aug. 31, dismissing the #Kremlin's recent claims of #battlefield success as “wishful thinking” and “outright #lies.”

https://kyivindependent.com/russias-2025-spring-summer-campaign-ends-with-almost-nothing/

There's a wealth of research for journalists to tap into, make their own work more useful.

Prebunking specificed in #NewspaperEditorialHandbooks?

"We investigate how to counter misinformation about voter and election fraud using data from the US and Brazil. Our study first compares two types of messages countering claims of widespread fraud: (i) retrospective corrections from credible sources speaking against interest and (ii) prebunking messages that prospectively warn of false claims about future elections and provide information about election security practices. In the US, each approach immediately increased election confidence and reduced fraud beliefs, with prebunking showing somewhat more durable effects. In Brazil, prebunking had positive immediate effects across measured outcomes, whereas those of the credible source corrections were less consistent. We then conducted an experiment in the US randomizing exposure to a persuasion forewarning before election security information is provided. Prebunking again increased confidence and decreased fraud beliefs but only when the forewarning was omitted, suggesting that novel factual information is responsible for the observed effects of the prebunking treatment."

#misinformation
#disinformation
#prebunking

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adv3758

NiemanLab: Trusted news sites may benefit in an internet full of AI-generated fakes, a new study finds. “We’re all getting a lot of AI-generated content in our feeds these days. But a new working paper suggests there’s a silver lining for trusted news organizations: they may be able to benefit from the broader degradation of the information ecosystem and win over subscribers concerned about […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/08/31/niemanlab-trusted-news-sites-may-benefit-in-an-internet-full-of-ai-generated-fakes-a-new-study-finds/

#ClimateCrisiis #misinformation

"Debunking climate misinformation is becoming a full-time job – but you can help defend the facts

The political pushback against positive green progress has been shocking. But as corporations and those in power turn away, the overwhelming majority of people in the world want more ambitious climate action.

About nine out of every 10 people in the world want their governments to take stronger climate actions, yet we’ve witnessed a dramatic shift away from the progress we need to avert climate disaster.

Powerful governments, financial institutions and big oil companies are turning their back on climate promises and some are funding secretive lobby groups and far-right politicians that want to shift away from the progress we need to make real, positive change.

The pushback has been shocking. Debunking climate disinformation is a full-time task for Guardian environment teams across the world, particularly in the United States, now that the world’s biggest fossil fuel producer appears intent on undermining hard-won progress on reducing emissions.

The most obvious elements of disinformation are the wild conspiracy theories spread by social media influencers and bots. Instead of attributing disasters to fossil fuels and cuts to emergency services and the US National Weather Service, in July they spread unfounded rumours that the deadly floods in Texas were caused by sinister weather modification technology. In this anything-but-the-truth realm, California wildfires were supposedly planned by officials to destroy child-trafficking tunnels, while the devastation in North Carolina caused by Hurricane Helene was apparently the result of a hushed-up dam failure and cloud seeding."

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/31/debunking-climate-misinformation-is-becoming-a-full-time-job-but-you-can-help-defend-the-facts

There was mention here of a UK proposal to change the rules for driving licences for those over 70.

A search brings up a series of sites with random names each carrying an AI generated 'article' which changes 'proposal' into an alleged new law which has allegedly already come into effect. A lot of spurious detail is added, together with a rationale.

There are pages and pages of this crud, making it impossible to find an official site with a definitive statement.

"I am extremely worried that with continued resignations, terminations, retirements, all because of what's going on through some of these policies, that we are not going to have the capacity to continue to do good science, to respond to an outbreak and to prevent chronic diseases."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cedv3gg3x6xo