PHOTO: SUPPLIEDFor Carl Bergstrom, misinformation is like a living organism — it can travel across networks and spread through populations like pathogens. Prof Bergstrom is a founding member of the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, which aims to resist strategic misinformation, promote an informed society and strengthen democratic discourse. He is also developing tools and techniques to help the public identify reliable evidence and combat what he calls "bulls..." — false, misleading information. More recently, he has spent a lot of time actively working to counter false claims regarding the Covid-19 pandemic, vaccines and treatments. This course will be the subject of his first public talk at the University of Otago, titled "Modern-day oracles or bulls... machines?

Source: Otago Daily Times February 03, 2026 16:07 UTC