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What a 17th century misinformation campaign can teach about today’s use of conspiracy theories to destabilize society
“King James I of England and VI of Scotland” by Daniel Mijtens, 1621. Shutterstock
Long before the internet, social media and other modern forms of communication, the information-hungry people of 17th century England published pamphlets to disseminate news and spread memes via “verse libels” – nasty poems shared through conversation or inserted into song lyrics.
And even then, they contended with the problem of “fake news” – conspiracy theories spread through these media to undermine the political discourse.
Alastair Bellany, chair of Rutgers University-New Brunswick’s history department in the School of Arts and Sciences, discusses how the death of one early-modern English king spurred a viral conspiracy theory that, through pamphlets and word of mouth, contributed to the execution of the next king – and whether parallel
Getting your online degree? New Jersey is the place for you
New Jersey is home to several well-regarded online degree programs, if US News & World Report is to be believed.
The rankings date back to the 2015-16 academic year, so the numbers won’t reflect the influx of online learning that took place because of the pandemic.
From US News:
The Distance Education State Almanac 2017 noted that 30,353 college students in New Jersey took exclusively online courses in fall 2015. This represented 7.2 percent of the state s collegiate population, which was nearly half the national average for this metric. Sixty-nine percent of New Jersey s exclusively distance learners were in-state residents, 30 percent were out-of-state students and 1 percent were from foreign countries.
The finding suggests that survivors rapidly evolve to resist the fungal disease, according to a new study.
“Evolution is often thought of as a process that happened long ago. We have found that it has also been happening right in our backyards…”
White-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats in North America since 2006, following its introduction from Europe. The syndrome, which the fungal pathogen
Pseudogymnoascus destructans causes, is arguably the most catastrophic wildlife disease in history. It has led to unprecedented declines in many North American bat species, including the little brown bat (
Myotis lucifugus).
“Our finding that little brown bat populations have evolved, which could be why they survived, has large implications for management of bat populations going forward,” says Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn, a former postdoctoral associate at Rutgers University-New Brunswick now at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland.