Sander van der Linden’s webpage at Cambridge University says he is an esteemed academic with prior positions at Princeton and Yale, and has published studies on social influence misinformation and fake news that place him among the top 1% of all social researchers and the top 2% across all of science.
Pretty much every major media outlet—the New York Times, BBC, CNN, the Economist, NPR, the Washington Post and NBC Nightly News — has interviewed van der Linden about his research, while his book Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity received wide praise.
But a month back, he climbed down from his lofty academic perch and picked a fight on X with writer Nate Silver and… Professor van der Linden got crushed: exposed as a liar and a quack who spreads misinformation while editing his personal Wikipedia page for the last decade through various single purpose accounts (SPAs) or sock puppets, to burnish his credentials and promote himself and his research.
“We are still getting numerous SPAs on this topic,” one Wikipedia editor noted about Sander van der Linden’s biography. “Nothing has changed, except they’ve gotten better at not getting caught.”
Examined in detail, the van der Linden episode highlights growing evidence that ‘“’misinformation research’ is just politics dressed up in academic garb to suppress and censor dissent on controversial topics.
The kerfuffle kicked off a few weeks back when Sander van der Linden whipped up a brawl on X with Nate Silver, perhaps because Silver has 3.3 million followers and van der Linden has around 15,000 and was hoping to attract some attention to himself. Days after the spat began, van der Linden was exposed for having edited Wikipedia pages to promote himself and his research. But more on that later.
In the first round, van der Linden promoted an article from years back, calling the possibility of a lab accident a racist conspiracy theory. Virologists and disinformation ‘experts’ promoted this line for years, until too much evidence squirted out showing that it never made sense. Plus, why is it “racist” to say the pandemic started in a Chinese lab and not in a Chinese market that sells wild animals?
It’s a narrative that never made any sense and was obviously designed to shut down discussion by labeling people “racist”.
“Misinformation has become a completely incoherent concept,” Silver wrote. “A game of ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue’.”
Oh, but it goes on.
Van der Linden then argued there was a “consensus” that the pandemic started naturally, as opposed to a “conspiracy” that it began in a lab. Again, this highlights how much of disinformation ‘research’ is slapping labels on ideas for reasons that are never really explained. It’s rhetorical magic.
And van der Linden ignores bounties of evidence that virologists ran a propaganda campaign to shout down anyone asking questions about a lab accident by planting papers in the Lancet Emerging Microbes and Infections and Nature Medicine.
“The ‘broad’ definition of misinformation is incoherent,” Silver noted. “What it signifies now is an effort to suppress dissent and launder partisan opinions into a false consensus on matters of legitimate controversy. It’s a cynical enterprise, aimed at the gullible.”
Van der Linden then doubled down with the “this is all a racism” argument.
“Half the reason Team Misinformation people bug me,” Silver responded, “Is because it’s just so obvious what they’re doing, taking genuinely contentious discussions and stigmatising the positions that don’t match their politics with the thinnest imaginable reeds of expert authority.”
Oh, but it continued – for several days. (This guy needs attention, no?)
Van der Linden then put out a tweet to drag others into the fight, including Peter Hotez, who was caught funding gain-of-function studies in Wuhan, researcher Angela Rasmussen and Arizona’s Michael Worobey, whose research on the pandemic’s origin has been noted for “careless and unprofessional handling of statistical methodology”.
At this point, it became pretty clear that van der Linden was trolling Silver to bring attention to himself — and he got that attention.
Digging through van der Linden’s Wikipedia page, the X account @triplebankshot noted that Wiki editors had caught van der Linden editing his page for the last decade through various sock puppets to create a suite of promotional material.
This guy is a complete fraud and pathological liar. He’s been repeatedly banned from Wikipedia over the last 10-plus years for using an army of sock puppets to create articles about himself with self-promotional material.
In the talk section of Sander van der Linden’s Wikipedia page, editors discussed how various purportedly unrelated accounts kept adding entries to promote Sander van der Linden, his research and his book. Here’s some of their findings:
- In 2019, two weeks before this paper was published, Whatdoyouknowanyway created an article about the journal it was published in.
- In July 2020 Meerkat2020 created Bad_News_(video_game) – his only contribution. That contained screenshots which have since been deleted on commons that were originally uploaded by Tony_gladstone1 who was blocked as part of the SPI.
- In September 2020 Jibberjabber20 made various unsourced changes to the biography which wouldn’t have been known publicly.
- In late 2020/early 2021, Youshallnotpass001 made two major edits to the biography which created a substantial section on his research contributions. He also argued against merging Gateway belief model (which had been redirected to the biography in 2018).
- In February this year, AntiMusk added promotional information about his newly-published Foolproof book and also removed information which would not have been known to the casual independent observer (Director of Studies in Psychological and Behavioural Sciences…)
- In May this year, Booklover 2023 created Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity with his first edit after being auto-confirmed. It contains a glowing biography of van der Linden and he also uploaded a high-resolution (1500 x 2300) version of the book cover which is not present in the source that he linked to, nor am I able to find it through reverse image searches. He was explicitly asked whether he had a conflict of interest by Jimfbleak and stated “There is no conflict of interest”. (Note that he refers to Against Empathy in that same post, which AntiMusk also edited.)
The editors concluded that these accounts were being generated just to promote Sander van der Linden, meaning van der Linden was orchestrating these accounts to craft propaganda about himself.
Some final thoughts from Silver about the whole Sander van der Linden episode and the silly academic discipline of ‘misinformation research’.
First published in Paul D. Thacker’s Disinformation Chronicle.
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This is so retro-cool….deja vu all over again….2005…..Great!….Not…….
Is Gordon Brown going to make a come back as well?
Farage’s first speech: ‘Mr Speaker….Who are you?’
Private Fraser knew a thing or two.
“…but anyone who didn’t see this coming has more subsidies than sense.”
It’s what our American cousins call bait and switch.
Congestion charge, ULEZ are huge revenue sources for the Council to provide cash to splurge on bribes and insane initiatives and projects.
Then there is the loss of Excise Duty and VAT on fuel and Road Fund Licence revenue to be replaced when/if motorists switch to BEVs.
The latter has already been addressed with BEV owners having to pay Road Fund Licence after 12 months.
They can look forward to either pay-per-mile or taxes on their electricity charges.
Poor wee lambs.
Just wrote near on the same as you
They already pay 20% VAT on away from home charging, but with the type of metering required they could increase that at home as well for many of the EV owners, instead of 5% on whatever charge rate they use. Technically possible for special rates to be applied at certain purposes and times of day as well (not that I’m advocating the use of “smart” meters etc).
Don’t forget Excise Duty. VAT is recoverable for VAT registered businesses but not Excise Duty which makes up a substantial part of tax revenue from motor fuels.
When all business vehicles are electric (Grin.), the Exchequer will have to make up that loss somehow.
Did Quentin Wilson and all the other ev evangelist believe their private slice of tax payer subsides were going to stretch on indefinitely?
And.. they’ll have to pay full road tax this year too! ..And, pay per mile in the near future, thats what all those cameras are for!
How do these net zero braindeads think you pay for infrastructure?..pixie wishes and fairy dust!
“thats what all those cameras are for!”
You know the £37 billion “spaffed” on Track and Trace? Well here is where it went.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Worst air in London
The sooner we get regular power cuts, the better. Let the anger build up.
They call it pushing the envelope. They push and if they meet no resistance they push some more. If resistance comes they pull back a bit and then attack with renewed ferocity. Rather like a constrictor snake or the WHO. We seem to exist in the naive world of little victories and such a view entirely misreads the nature of a predatory system.
Just like the Constrictor snake they do speak in forked tongues!
Which raises the question: will TfL apply such charges to buses and cabs as well? Many of those have changed to electric, so they probably won’t like it either, except by increasing the fares etc to cover it.
Don’t you worry they will be sticking a meter on your mouth soon. You had better start practicing yoga or chi kung or such like because every breath is going to cost you. And you have a bloody cheek whingeing given that you are lucky to be alive after the release of the bioweapon. If you buy an appliance and you see the word ‘smart’ in the schtick then it is probably best to avoid it. Just like it is better not to use cards when paying for things. I’ve even seen people in shops paying for things with their phones which seems crazy to me.
More should join ABD Alliance for British drivers. If they start handing out AK47S I’m up for that because things are going to get serious.
UK Column did a good segment on Wednesday’s show about the Constitution and the importance of Jury Nullification. Jurors have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to their conscience. This lately has been used by JSO but a stopped clock is right twice per day:https://defendourjuries.org/
I never stopped loving my diesel.
We’ll be using oil for a long, long, long time to come.
I forget his name some American academic who wrote a book about how these restrictions on pollution (designed to target industry) – they are always designed to keep the population in check and to keep the disparity between their wealth and ours. It is deeper than just global warming. It sounds rather bleak but they really have an agenda to wipe us all out.
As EV’s are as toxic as hell, I would charge them more.
England has promised to be the first and foremost so it is good to see the English taking charge, The sort of people who did well in their A levels and went to university in England. I can see it now the whole picture. At the time I thought otherwise and they thought otherwise. England will always be a wild land regardless of London. And people in other countries take inspiraton from our ripping up of ULEZ cameras.
My old man said follow the (Mili)band and don’t dilly dally on the way.
Off when went me meter with me old readings on it.
In came the smart one with dynamic pricing innit.
But I dillied and dallied, dallied and dillied
Lost me way and voted for the reds.
Well you can’t trust the labour with your bread and honey
When you cannot heat your home.
…and full excise duty coming for BEV owners next year too!
Recent measurements by Brown Car Guy, indicate that the most polluted transport in London is the Tube system, where air quality is miles higher than the alleged “Limit” for roads. Khan is undoubtedly aware of this but the Tube is not closed down. This is a case of massive “doublethink” for political reasons!
“Policies are intended to clear the roads and transform society….”
We know that’s the plan. They’ve made no attempt to hide it; in fact they’re crowing about it.
I have no sympathy for the fools who were suckered into getting an EV thinking they were safe and wouldn’t be made to pay for the “crime” of owning a car. They’re not; they’re no safer than the rest of us who have a bit more common sense and are refusing to meekly go along with the coercion.
Well, duh. It’s called a congestion charge – not an emission charge. They have been very honest from the start of the green agenda, and there is no need to invoke conspiracy theory. But there’s none so visually impaired as those who will not see, as they say.