Truth Decay, the diminishing role of facts in American public life, isn't a problem that any one person can fix. But there are simple steps that individuals can take to help counter it.
How can technology help ease the transition from jails or prisons back into the community—and ensure better outcomes for individuals who have been incarcerated?
A supposedly leaked RAND report about a bizarre U.S. conspiracy to “weaken Germany” is fake. Genuine RAND research, analysis, and commentary on the war in Ukraine may be found at rand.org.
This weekly recap focuses on the challenges of VA community care, the importance of improving middle schoolers' media literacy skills, tips to improve sleep, and more.
The cover story is a profile of RAND's new president and CEO. Other features explore how teachers and principals have been faring in the COVID era and how to improve media literacy among middle schoolers.
Middle schoolers can be savvy users of news and information—when they know where to look. But they're also easy marks for misinformation, disinformation, and trolls. Helping them find their way in today's media landscape is important both for their futures and for the future of democracy.
Virtual reality environments such as the metaverse will enable psychological and emotional manipulation of users at a level unimaginable in today's media. We must not wait until these technologies are fully realized to consider appropriate guardrails for them. We can reap the benefits of the metaverse while minimizing its potential for great harm.
The National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program serves young people experiencing difficulty in traditional high school. This report documents program trends in 2020–2021 and presents analyses on the Job ChalleNGe program.
Cadets in the National Guard Youth Challenge (ChalleNGe) Program use a goal-setting process called the Post-Residential Action Plan (P-RAP) to navigate career and life choices. The authors analyzed the P-RAP process across multiple ChalleNGe sites.
This tool is a cleaned, easy-to-use, and streamlined data product containing information from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal household survey that facilitates research into different aspects of population aging in the United States.
This research draws on expert interviews and workshops to answer the question how skills needs will change in the four priority areas (health, science and technology, managers, and skilled trades) over the next 5–10 years.
Misinformation could become a major barrier to individuals trying to find safe, legal, and quality reproductive care. How might states, health insurers, and technology companies address this problem?
Various AI technologies are ripe for use in disinformation campaigns. Deepfake videos represent an obvious threat, but voice cloning, deepfake images, and generative text also merit concern. And websites now offer access to deepfake services.
The authors examined how the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has programmed its resources, focusing on the reasons for changes over time and the results of the changes.
RAND supporters have contributed more than $4 million to endow a new chair to advance research aimed at countering Truth Decay—the diminishing role of facts and analysis in public life—while paying tribute to RAND President and CEO Michael D. Rich, who is stepping down this year after more than a decade at the institution's helm.
This weekly recap focuses on reducing America's unacceptably high rates of gun violence, what would happen if China “quarantines” Taiwan, and Russia's “firehose of falsehood.”
For Jessica Cecil, founder and former head of the Trusted News Initiative, today feels a bit like the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire, in which agreed-upon facts endure in only a few isolated places of elite discussion and there is no common language of politics. She spoke about the need for governments, companies, news organizations, and relevant civil society groups to work together to combat disinformation at a meeting of RAND Europe's Council of Advisors.
As former head of the New York Times and the BBC, Mark Thompson has tackled disinformation on both sides of the Atlantic. One of his big takeaways: It's not as easy as you might think to sustain a successful disinformation campaign.
As part of RAND's efforts to counter Truth Decay, researchers developed a series of five lesson plans to help teachers introduce middle school students to a key element of civic education: understanding and engaging with public policy topics.
This weekly recap focuses on the internet's role in stoking extremism and hate, how Russia has failed its military personnel, a research roadmap to help prevent police killings in the United States, and more.
Though present in Europe, the evidence suggests that trends of Truth Decay are not as widespread or as pronounced as they are in the United States. There is still time for policymakers to intervene and limit their growth.
The role of facts and data in public life in Europe is changing and a new study has found evidence of the signs of Truth Decay. However, there is still time to act and help prevent or slow its growth. Senior researchers Axelle Devaux and Stijn Hoorens discuss the research in the Expert Insights podcast.
