The wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. However, the World Wide Web (WWW) also allows for the rapid dissemination of unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories that often elicit rapid, large, but naive social responses such as the recent case of Jade Helm 15--where a simp...

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There are two intentional difference between this version of the article and the original published version. First, the original published version contains an error in Figure 2 which was inadvertently introduced during the editing process. Specifically, the sign of the condom use/HIV correlation was reversed. This electronic version of the article contains the correct version of Figure 2. Secon...

People’s inability to update their memories in light of corrective information may have important public health consequences, as in the case of vaccination choice. In the present study, we compare three potentially effective strategies in vaccine promotion: one contrasting myths vs. facts, one employing fact and icon boxes, and one showing images of non-vaccinated sick children. Beliefs in the ...

Both in learning and in natural science, one faces the problem of selecting among a range of theories, all of which are compatible with the available evidence. The traditional response to this problem has been to select the simplest such theory on the basis of “Ockham’s Razor”. But how can a fixed bias toward simplicity help us find possibly complex truths? I survey the current, textbook answer...

BACKGROUND The already significant impact of the Ebola epidemic on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, was worsened by a fear of contagion that aggravated the health crisis. However, in contrast to other Ebola-affected countries, Nigeria fared significantly better due to its swift containment of the disease. The objective of our study was to describe the impact of Ebola on the Nigerian private se...

This report contains results of an experimental study of the distribution of misinformation in online social networks (OSNs). We consider the classification of the topologies of OSNs and analyze the parameters identified in order to relate the topology of a real network with one of the classes. We propose an algorithm for conducting a search for the percolation cluster in the social graph. Resu...

Combating harmful misinformation about pharmaceuticals on social media is a growing challenge. The complexity of health information, the role expert intermediaries in disseminating and information dynamics create an environment where spreads rapidly. However, little known origin this misinformation. This article explores processes through which from online marketplaces legitimized spread. Speci...