ScAm - 09.2019

September 2019, ScientificAmerican.com 1

26 SPECIAL ISSUE—TRUTH, LIES AND UNCERTAINTY

SEPTEMBER 2019

VOLUME 321, NUMBER 3

PHYSICS

30 Virtually Reality

How close can physics—the

most fundamental of the sci-

ences—bring us to an under-

standing of the foundations

of reality? By  George  Musser

33 How a physician

searches for answers.

By  John  P.  A.  Ioannidis

MATHEMATICS

35 Numbers Game

Is math real? By  Kelsey

Houston-Edwards

38 How a historical linguist

searches for answers.

By  Lyle  Campbell

NEUROSCIENCE

40 Our Inner Universes

In a sense, we really are all

living in different worlds:

“reality” is constructed by the

brain, and no two brains are

exactly alike. By  Anil  K.  Seth

46 How a paleobiologist

searches for answers.

By  Anjali  Goswami

28

DECISION SCIENCE

74 Tough Calls

How we make decisions

when we are faced with

incomplete information.

By  Baruch  Fischhoff

76 How a behavioral scien-

tist searches for answers.

By  Phillip Atiba  Goff

DATA SCIENCE

80 Confronting Unknowns

Interpreting uncertainty

in commonly used forms

of data visualization.

By Jessica Hullman

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

84 Radical Change

Why feeling uncertain about

the world breeds populism.

By  Michael  A. Hogg

86 How a neuroscientist

searches for answers.

By  Stuart  Firestein

COMMUNICATION

88 A New World Disorder

The evolution of digital disin-

formation. By  Claire  Wardle

91 How a theoretical physi-

cist searches for answers.

By  Nima Arkani-Hamed

TRUTH

LIES

UN

CERT

AINT

Y

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR

50 Deception in the Wild

Homo sapiens is not the only

species that deceives.

By  Barbara J.  King

52 How a social technologist

searches for answers.

By  Kate Crawford

NETWORK SCIENCE

54 Why We Trust Lies

The epidemic of misinforma-

tion. By  Cailin  O’Connor and

James Owen  Weatherall

60 How a statistician

searches for answers.

By  Nicole  Lazar

BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS

62 Contagious Dishonesty

How corruption spreads

through societies.

By  Dan  Ariely and

Ximena Garcia-Rada

CYBERSECURITY

67 How to Defraud

Democracy

A worst-case scenario for the

2020 American presidential

election. By  J.  Alex Halder-

man, as  told to Jen  Schwartz

70 How a data journalist

searches for answers.

By  Meredith  Broussard

48

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