March 1, 2016

Dunning and Proctor also warn that the wilful spread of ignorance is rampant throughout the US presidential primaries on both sides of the political spectrum. “Donald Trump is the obvious current example in the US, suggesting easy solutions to followers that are either unworkable or unconstitutional,” says Dunning. So while agnotology may have had its…

Proctor had found that the cigarette industry did not want consumers to know the harms of its product, and it spent billions obscuring the facts of the health effects of smoking. This search led him to create a word for the study of deliberate propagation of ignorance: agnotology. Agnotology is the study of wilful acts…

Polling booths have opened in the UK for US expats wishing to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate. The organisation Democrats Abroad has opened stations in Oxford, Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and St Andrews on so-called Super Tuesday. Democrats Abroad is treated as a state and will send a similar quantity of delegates to the Democrat…