Ground Truth

These messages describe the challenges of knowing what is valid.

    • A Thousand Words

      Sebastião Salgado was born in 1944 in Brazil. He had a difficult childhood but eventually received a PhD in Economics from the University of Paris. With a degree, he began his professional career as an economist for the International Coffee Organization. It was this...

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    • How Can We Know

      Brian Wansink was born in Iowa in 1960. He came from a blue-collar family who valued education, eventually earning a Ph.D. in marketing from Stanford University. He went on to teach at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and the Wharton School of Business at...

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    • Transmitting Harm

      Andrew Wakefield was born in 1956 in England. Both parents were medical doctors and that became his career path as well. He began his career by exploring tissue rejection after transplantation surgery. His career took a turn when he published a paper linking the...

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    • Transmitting Harm

      Andrew Wakefield was born in 1956 in England. Both parents were medical doctors and that became his career path as well. He began his career by exploring tissue rejection after transplantation surgery. His career took a turn when he published a paper linking the...

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    • Polarization of Science

      Trofim Lysenko was born to a peasant family in Ukraine in 1898. He developed an interest in agriculture and graduated from the Kyiv Agricultural Institute. His early interests were finding a way to grow crops in the harsh winters of his homeland. His work in improving...

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    • Propaganda: What We Know from Neuroscience

      Until recently propaganda was a matter of throwing mud at a wall to see what sticks. (See Propaganda: A Look Back) It was effective because financial support provided the funds for a lot of propaganda. Now with the research of neuroscientists using fMRI, propaganda...

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    • A Hidden Epidemic

      Apophenia is the brain’s tendency to see meaningful connections between things that are unrelated. It is useful for finding creative breakthroughs, but it can lead to psychiatric dysfunction when taken to extremes. And that’s where the epidemic comes into play. Our...

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    • How We Understand Science

      Frank Field was born to Ukrainian immigrants to the U.S. He later anglicized his last name to Feld. He studied geology in college and then served in World War II where he was assigned duties as a meteorologist. His assignment was to help predict weather prior to...

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    • Overcoming Bad History

      Margot Stern was born in Chicago in 1942. When her family moved to Memphis when she was five, her experience in the Jim Crow South became a crucible moment in her life. Both of her parents engaged their three children in intellectual development and this became her...

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    • A United America

      Sophia Cochrane was a journalist who wrote stories about people. She had the ability to get people to open up to her in a way that few journalists could. It was for this reason that her editor assigned her to spend a week in Juliette County, one of the most...

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