This paper presents two studies on the development and validation of a ten-item scale of epistemic vice and the relationship between epistemic vice and misinformation and fake news. Epistemic vices have been defined as character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. Examples of epistemic vice are gullibility and indifference to knowledge. It has been hypothesized that epistemically vicious people are especially susceptible to misinformation and conspiracy theories. We conducted one exploratory and one confirmatory observational survey study on (...) Amazon Mechanical Turk among people living in the United States (total _N_ = 1737). We show that two psychological traits underlie the range of epistemic vices that we investigated: indifference to truth and rigidity. Indifference manifests itself in a lack of motivation to find the truth. Rigidity manifests itself in being insensitive to evidence. We develop a scale to measure epistemic vice with the subscales indifference and rigidity. The Epistemic Vice Scale is internally consistent; has good convergent, divergent, and discriminant validity; and is strongly associated with the endorsement of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Epistemic vice explains additional variance in the endorsement of misinformation and conspiracy theories over and above demographic and related psychological concepts and shows medium to large effect sizes across outcome measures. We demonstrate that epistemic vice differs from existing psychological constructs, and show that the scale can explain individual differences in dealing with misinformation and conspiracy theories. We conclude that epistemic vice might contribute to “postfactive” ways of thinking. (shrink)

During the current COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation is a major challenge, raising several social and psychological concerns. This article highlights the prevailing misinformation as an outbreak containing hoaxes, myths, and rumours. In comparison to traditional media, online media platforms facilitate misinformation even more widely. To further affirm this ethical concern, the researchers cite relevant studies demonstrating the role of new media in misinformation and its potential consequences. Besides other significant psychosocial impacts, such as xenophobia, psychological distress, LGBT rights violation, gender-based violence, (...) misinformation is undermining healthcare workers’ psychological health and their efforts to mitigate the impact of COVID-19. In view of the adverse consequences of misinformation, this article addresses it as a massive ethical challenge during the current outbreak. Thus, the researchers make relevant suggestions to evaluate misinformation sources and mitigate the psychosocial impacts attributed to misinformation during crises. They include forming mental health teams comprising of psychologists, psychiatrists, and trained paramedical staff; rapid dissemination of authentic and updated COVID-19 situation reports regularly; establishing helpline services; and recognizing a broader range of personal needs. All health authorities should make clear that they are listening and responding to public concerns. Much effort is needed to counteract COVID-19 misinformation. (shrink)

Confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States increased exponentially, quickly leading to a pandemic in 2020, which created a serious public-health emergency. During the period in which the COVID-1...

Three interdependent factors are behind the current Covid-19 pandemic distorted narrative: (1) science´s culture of “publish or perish”, (2) misinformation spread by traditional media and social digital media and (3) distrust of technology for tracing contacts and its privacy-related issues. In this short paper, I wish to tackle how these three factors have added up to give rise to a negative public understanding of science in times of a health crisis, such as the current Covid-19 pandemic and finally, how to (...) confront all these problems. (shrink)

Uncontrolled access to information on the Internet has many advantages, but it also leads to the phenomenon of fake news. Fake news is dangerous in many spheres, including that of health. For example, we are facing an increase in the amount of vaccine hesitancy. This has been w considered by the World Health Organization in 2019 as one of the greatest threats to public health. This specific phenomenon is linked with the spread of information on the Internet around that issue. (...) In this paper, I discuss a proposition of new crime, which has the aim of fighting medical fake news by stopping its spread. This proposition should be considered only if other non-criminal measures are inefficient. The proposal is “Whoever publicly disseminates information evidently discrepant with medical knowledge is subject to a penalty.”. (shrink)