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Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life
Political and civil discourse in the United States is characterized by “Truth Decay,” defined as increasing disagreement about facts, a blurring of the line between opinion and fact, an increase in the relative volume of opinion compared with fact, and lowered trust in formerly respected sources of factual information. This report explores the causes and wide-ranging consequences of Truth Decay and proposes strategies for further action.
324 pages, PDF ebook
Published January 26, 2018
97 people are currently reading
798 people want to read
About the author
Jennifer Kavanagh
17 books3 followersJennifer Kavanagh is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation and associate director of the Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program in the RAND Arroyo Center. Her research focuses on U.S. political institutions and public opinion and their implications for U.S. foreign and domestic policy. She also studies defense strategy and planning, military force posture, and U.S. military interventions.
Kavanagh graduated from Harvard University with a BA in government and a minor in the Russian language. She completed her Ph.D. in political science and public policy at University of Michigan. Her dissertation, "The Dynamics of Protracted Terror Campaigns: Domestic Politics, Terrorist Violence, Counterterror Responses" was named the best dissertation in the public policy subfield in 2010 by the American Political Science Association.
Kavanagh graduated from Harvard University with a BA in government and a minor in the Russian language. She completed her Ph.D. in political science and public policy at University of Michigan. Her dissertation, "The Dynamics of Protracted Terror Campaigns: Domestic Politics, Terrorist Violence, Counterterror Responses" was named the best dissertation in the public policy subfield in 2010 by the American Political Science Association.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 4, 2018
Great title, interesting study
This book reports the results of a Rand study on the difficulties in determining what is true and what isn’t and how that affects our trust in institutions and in each other. It takes a good look at the blurring of facts and opinions, at cognitive bias, misinformation and changes in our information systems. Really interesting read. Makes me wish I was working on the follow up studies.
This book reports the results of a Rand study on the difficulties in determining what is true and what isn’t and how that affects our trust in institutions and in each other. It takes a good look at the blurring of facts and opinions, at cognitive bias, misinformation and changes in our information systems. Really interesting read. Makes me wish I was working on the follow up studies.
April 9, 2019
"Truth Decay and its many manifestations pose a direct threat to democracy and have real costs and consequences—economic, political, and diplomatic" (p. 191). If you’ve just crawled out from a long hibernation, you may have the only excuse for not knowing the War on Truth currently being waged.
Kavanagh and Rich produced a textbook-scholarly article, complete with opening Summary, a Methodology section, footnotes, and a 35-page bibliography. The doc is offered to the public by RAND for free here (https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_re...) and has a summary posted too. The authors stress the importance of this topic and show noble humility when explaining that this work is an initial springboard, mentioning often that more research needs to be undertaken in order to dissect the dynamics at play, and thwart the dissemination and spread of disinformation in our digital era.
As a former Army PSYOPer, I can say with some authority how easy it is to manipulate the thinking of some people; and, with equal sadness as an Iraq War veteran, I know how it feels to be manipulated by your own government (rot in Hell Donnie Rumsfeld et al.) and media outlets pounding the war drums without questioning motives or reasons. Agents of Capitalism, foreign entities, and overweight Incels forever living in their moms' basements manufacture psychological operations online with ever-increasing speed and skill. If you haven't seen the HBO film "Brexit" yet, I highly recommend it. It addresses Truth Decay powerfully, and highlights the complexity of fighting it. Now, of course, we know more than we did before Cambridge Analytica, Russian troll farms, our soulless digital oligarchs and their Empires of Information, and the painfully susceptible demographics in just about any region easily swayed by obfuscations, fomentations, and abject lies.
The authors showcase an abstract battle plan, but also realize how tough any solutions will be: “A stronger response to the decline in civic discourse must include commitments at the local and national levels, among members of Congress, and among leading media organizations to have serious and civil discussions about important issues. This would involve a real effort by Democratic and Republican members of the House and the Senate to have serious debates about policy issues that include members of both parties and efforts by media organizations to host substantive discussions on topics of public interest and concern among experts with different backgrounds and viewpoints (rather than tailoring content to appeal to specific demographics). A return to civil discourse must also include changes in the way Americans consume information and the value that people place on facts. Restoring civil discourse will be challenging, but it is not impossible. In fact, working against Truth Decay could naturally move toward that restoration by rebuilding the emphasis on and respect for facts, which must be the foundation of any meaningful discourse” (p. 198).
The dynamics of Truth Decay will not be easily defeated: “Political polarization in the current U.S. political system has reached historically high levels” (p. 153). “The gap between the requirements of the new information system and the training provided by schools in such areas as civic and media literacy and critical thinking means that students and young adults are not able to detect, account for, and correct the blurring of the line between opinion and fact that characterizes Truth Decay, and this lack of skill could affect their interpretation and use of information. The gap between the requirements of the information system and current school curricula drives and perpetuates Truth Decay by contributing to the creation of an electorate that is highly susceptible to mis- and disinformation and to information that blurs the line between fact and opinion (or fact and falsehood) and by contributing to the creation of a context in which this information is shared and in which Truth Decay flourishes” (p. 149).
I am on the side of objective Truth, historical Wisdom, Critical Thinking, and comprehensive Education. An ill-informed voter is a danger to the entire process of Democracy (especially in this period with our Dipshit-in-Chief being a categorically chronic liar, surrounded by hand-puppet Deplorables dismantling the system as best they can, with Fox News and Sinclair Broadcast Group sowing their poisonous seeds into already toxic soil). We must all do more to fight Truth Decay. History will not look kindly on us if we continue down this path of wanton recklessness, and it may already be too late.
Knowledge is power. I [heart] fact-checkers.
Kavanagh and Rich produced a textbook-scholarly article, complete with opening Summary, a Methodology section, footnotes, and a 35-page bibliography. The doc is offered to the public by RAND for free here (https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_re...) and has a summary posted too. The authors stress the importance of this topic and show noble humility when explaining that this work is an initial springboard, mentioning often that more research needs to be undertaken in order to dissect the dynamics at play, and thwart the dissemination and spread of disinformation in our digital era.
As a former Army PSYOPer, I can say with some authority how easy it is to manipulate the thinking of some people; and, with equal sadness as an Iraq War veteran, I know how it feels to be manipulated by your own government (rot in Hell Donnie Rumsfeld et al.) and media outlets pounding the war drums without questioning motives or reasons. Agents of Capitalism, foreign entities, and overweight Incels forever living in their moms' basements manufacture psychological operations online with ever-increasing speed and skill. If you haven't seen the HBO film "Brexit" yet, I highly recommend it. It addresses Truth Decay powerfully, and highlights the complexity of fighting it. Now, of course, we know more than we did before Cambridge Analytica, Russian troll farms, our soulless digital oligarchs and their Empires of Information, and the painfully susceptible demographics in just about any region easily swayed by obfuscations, fomentations, and abject lies.
The authors showcase an abstract battle plan, but also realize how tough any solutions will be: “A stronger response to the decline in civic discourse must include commitments at the local and national levels, among members of Congress, and among leading media organizations to have serious and civil discussions about important issues. This would involve a real effort by Democratic and Republican members of the House and the Senate to have serious debates about policy issues that include members of both parties and efforts by media organizations to host substantive discussions on topics of public interest and concern among experts with different backgrounds and viewpoints (rather than tailoring content to appeal to specific demographics). A return to civil discourse must also include changes in the way Americans consume information and the value that people place on facts. Restoring civil discourse will be challenging, but it is not impossible. In fact, working against Truth Decay could naturally move toward that restoration by rebuilding the emphasis on and respect for facts, which must be the foundation of any meaningful discourse” (p. 198).
The dynamics of Truth Decay will not be easily defeated: “Political polarization in the current U.S. political system has reached historically high levels” (p. 153). “The gap between the requirements of the new information system and the training provided by schools in such areas as civic and media literacy and critical thinking means that students and young adults are not able to detect, account for, and correct the blurring of the line between opinion and fact that characterizes Truth Decay, and this lack of skill could affect their interpretation and use of information. The gap between the requirements of the information system and current school curricula drives and perpetuates Truth Decay by contributing to the creation of an electorate that is highly susceptible to mis- and disinformation and to information that blurs the line between fact and opinion (or fact and falsehood) and by contributing to the creation of a context in which this information is shared and in which Truth Decay flourishes” (p. 149).
I am on the side of objective Truth, historical Wisdom, Critical Thinking, and comprehensive Education. An ill-informed voter is a danger to the entire process of Democracy (especially in this period with our Dipshit-in-Chief being a categorically chronic liar, surrounded by hand-puppet Deplorables dismantling the system as best they can, with Fox News and Sinclair Broadcast Group sowing their poisonous seeds into already toxic soil). We must all do more to fight Truth Decay. History will not look kindly on us if we continue down this path of wanton recklessness, and it may already be too late.
Knowledge is power. I [heart] fact-checkers.
July 24, 2018
Everyone I know agrees that partisanship is at an all time high in the US, and that opinions and facts are being treated as interchangeable more and more often. Truth Decay is the first book I know of to take a really in-depth look at why this phenomenon exists in this particular historical moment, what its repercussions are, and where solutions might lie.
The book, which the RAND Corporation frames as an “Initial Exploration,” doesn’t contain any original research. Instead, it compiles existing scholarship and delineates arguments in order to determine what exactly the problem is, what we already know about it, and what we still need to explore.
One of the things I appreciated most in this book is its way of defining the terms of the issue. The authors distinguish between “disinformation” and “misinformation,” and detail the relationship between (and value of) “fact,” “analysis,” and “consensus.”
The presence of so much information compiled together has made it easier to make sense of the problems we’re facing. Most people intuitively know that social media has contributed to “truth decay,” but here the authors actually trace out the mechanism behind how this works, and present relevant data about its strength and prevalence. Some of the findings are surprising (for example, that algorithms seem to have a negligible affect on creating social media echo chambers compared to self selection). Others seem obvious in retrospect (for example, the shift to a 24-hour news cycle has encouraged TV news outlets to fill time with opinion- and personality-based talk shows).
Admirably, the RAND Corporation lives up to its reputation for non-partisanship, pulling examples from across the political spectrum. If I had to make any complaints, I would say that the writers fall into the same trap as a lot of social scientists: in an effort to speak objectively about an unquantifiable subject, the sentences are loaded with so many modifiers that they occasionally undermine their own premise by the time you reach the period. But in a media environment overflowing with confrontational bloviating, a run-on sentence written with great care by a pair of dispassionate, inquisitive academics is like a breath of fresh air.
The book, which the RAND Corporation frames as an “Initial Exploration,” doesn’t contain any original research. Instead, it compiles existing scholarship and delineates arguments in order to determine what exactly the problem is, what we already know about it, and what we still need to explore.
One of the things I appreciated most in this book is its way of defining the terms of the issue. The authors distinguish between “disinformation” and “misinformation,” and detail the relationship between (and value of) “fact,” “analysis,” and “consensus.”
The presence of so much information compiled together has made it easier to make sense of the problems we’re facing. Most people intuitively know that social media has contributed to “truth decay,” but here the authors actually trace out the mechanism behind how this works, and present relevant data about its strength and prevalence. Some of the findings are surprising (for example, that algorithms seem to have a negligible affect on creating social media echo chambers compared to self selection). Others seem obvious in retrospect (for example, the shift to a 24-hour news cycle has encouraged TV news outlets to fill time with opinion- and personality-based talk shows).
Admirably, the RAND Corporation lives up to its reputation for non-partisanship, pulling examples from across the political spectrum. If I had to make any complaints, I would say that the writers fall into the same trap as a lot of social scientists: in an effort to speak objectively about an unquantifiable subject, the sentences are loaded with so many modifiers that they occasionally undermine their own premise by the time you reach the period. But in a media environment overflowing with confrontational bloviating, a run-on sentence written with great care by a pair of dispassionate, inquisitive academics is like a breath of fresh air.
June 8, 2018
What actually tickled my interest for the book was the title and its more or less hidden metaphor. This written approach of Jennifer Kavanagh presents four tendencies which could be merged under the metaphor of the ruin, of the decay, since the thesis is that we are dealing with a process of degradation of truth: a growing disagreement on the facts and the analytical interpretations of the facts, the erosion of the boundary between facts and opinions, the exponential growth of the amount of opinions and personal experiences to the detriment of the facts and the erosion of trust in traditional sources of expertise.
The author operates the distinction between the causes and consequences; therefore, the main causes that led to this truth degradation and decomposition process are the imperfect cognitive processes, the successive changes that the operating system has suffered and the contradictory requirements to the educational system.
The author postulates that, despite the conceptual rigor and the strictness of the classifications, the distinctions between causes, consequences and forms of manifestation are not that easy to be made. A great situation is the example of the polarization, example which has made a great space in the economy of this written approach. So, the economic polarization amplifies the speech polarization, while the last one manifests itself through the echo chambers created by the digital platforms. Also, the economic polarization reaches the link to the geographical one and this is the way the „hostile camps” are born, each with its very own narrative mehanism and their worldwide perspectives, creating a political enclavisation. Each of these „camps” gets isolated and it affects the process of „keeping the business clean”, misinformation being proliferated.
The author operates the distinction between the causes and consequences; therefore, the main causes that led to this truth degradation and decomposition process are the imperfect cognitive processes, the successive changes that the operating system has suffered and the contradictory requirements to the educational system.
The author postulates that, despite the conceptual rigor and the strictness of the classifications, the distinctions between causes, consequences and forms of manifestation are not that easy to be made. A great situation is the example of the polarization, example which has made a great space in the economy of this written approach. So, the economic polarization amplifies the speech polarization, while the last one manifests itself through the echo chambers created by the digital platforms. Also, the economic polarization reaches the link to the geographical one and this is the way the „hostile camps” are born, each with its very own narrative mehanism and their worldwide perspectives, creating a political enclavisation. Each of these „camps” gets isolated and it affects the process of „keeping the business clean”, misinformation being proliferated.
February 13, 2019
O livro é um estudo que apresenta os conceitos que compõe o "Truth Decay", detalhando seu funcionamento, mostra alguns de seus drivers(como mudanças no sistema de informação, cognitive biases, polarização) e algumas consequências. O foco é a sociedade dos EUA, e os impactos principalmente em política, com foco nas elaborações de políticas públicas e sociais, erosão do discurso, paralisia politica, entre outros.
Ele difere um pouco de outros livros sobre verdades, pós-verdades, democracia americana em queda, por fazer um estudo mais abrangente em uma mudança sócio politica. Se coloca como um ponta-pé nessa linha de pesquisa, que deve ser aprofundado tanto para validação dos drivers, tendências e consequências. E é um livro bem acadêmico, fundamentado em estudos, com metodologia clara.
Ele difere um pouco de outros livros sobre verdades, pós-verdades, democracia americana em queda, por fazer um estudo mais abrangente em uma mudança sócio politica. Se coloca como um ponta-pé nessa linha de pesquisa, que deve ser aprofundado tanto para validação dos drivers, tendências e consequências. E é um livro bem acadêmico, fundamentado em estudos, com metodologia clara.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 26, 2024
"Truth Decay" (Kavanagh & Rich, 2018) explores the diminishing societal regard for verifiable facts and data with respect to political, scientific/environmental and social issues - a process defined as truth decay. The book identifies the trends, causes, and consequences of truth decay from both current and historical perspectives. Research intended to improve understanding and mitigation of Truth Decay is also proposed. Societal inability to accept verifiable facts or data impedes the ability to make rational choices. For example, truth decay is strongly implicated in the 2016 American election and, in my opinion, is the root of various forms of science denial (anthropogenic global warming denial, COVID denial, anti-vaxers, anti-maskers, etc.). As a society and a species, we devalue facts at our own peril. This book is objective and insightful. I recommend it.
January 26, 2024
Some good points and some general stuff.
Good points are:
Creating this term "Truth Decay" was interesting.
Authors look at prior instances where Truth Decay was a factor.
Their model of pathways that allow/enable Truth Decay is quite good. (not exhaustive but well done)
Their ideas on how to take this forward are quite important and hope people check on this.
It looked a solid 4 star book for me. But their writing is not good. Put me to sleep 3/4 times. Use Tim Ferris skimming technique first and then read the relevant stuff in deep. Or focus on what pointed out and thank me for time saved.
Good points are:
Creating this term "Truth Decay" was interesting.
Authors look at prior instances where Truth Decay was a factor.
Their model of pathways that allow/enable Truth Decay is quite good. (not exhaustive but well done)
Their ideas on how to take this forward are quite important and hope people check on this.
It looked a solid 4 star book for me. But their writing is not good. Put me to sleep 3/4 times. Use Tim Ferris skimming technique first and then read the relevant stuff in deep. Or focus on what pointed out and thank me for time saved.
January 26, 2025
Good info and I wish books like these (including Levitin's, Lakoff's and Chomasky's) are regularly updated - even if it is to give more current examples.
October 28, 2025
read this for media studies
April 2, 2020
It was a very good prepared book not only defines post-truth era’s problems but also tries to highlight underlying facts , then suggests research areas. The only critic i could gave is that while giving examples of truth decay authors
provide opinions like suggesting GMOs are healthy where scientific data is not enough to suggest.
provide opinions like suggesting GMOs are healthy where scientific data is not enough to suggest.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews