Joe Pierre, MD
@psychunseen
Academic psychiatrist at UCSF and author of the Psych Unseen blog at Psychology Today and the book False: How Mistrust, Disinformation, and Motivated Reasoning Make Us Believe Things That Aren't True (Oxford University Press, 2025) drjoepierre.com
Speaking of things that are false, I cover the pandemic and Fauci in my book FALSE: How Mistrust, Disinformation, and Motivated Reasoning Make Us Believe Things That Aren't True. If you haven't read it yet, please give it a read. If you have, please give it a review. Thanks!
It’s mind-boggling to think that Trump is president because of voters who were upset that gas prices were too high, that the US was involved in too many overseas entanglements, and that it was Democrats who were the Deep State pedophiles.
Blaming the problem on structural issues is to be expected, but IMO this is primarily an issue of cognitive laziness and excessive trust in an inherently flawed tool. www.statnews.com/2026/05/07/l...
New paper finds that fabricated / fake citations are increasing common in articles published in medical journals. We know that AI is prone to hallucinating, but for me the main take-home is an appalling level of cognitive laziness to which no sector seems immune. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
"people consistently preferred and chose to interact w/ sycophantic AI models over disagreeable chatbots that challenged their beliefs... conversations w/sycophantic chatbots [also] increased attitude extremity & certainty." @jayvanbavel.bsky.social @steverathje.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...
Lots of mounting evidence that asking chatbots for medical advice is a bad idea. Within health topics where misinformation abounds, chatbots give problematic answers about half the time. Garbage in, garbage out. bmjopen.bmj.com/content/16/4...
Happy to see my book FALSE on the shelf in a store on the other side of the planet.
I, for one, look forward to the day when false claims and bullshit takes are, once again, no longer given a podium and amplified. How about you?
Here in the UK for the Cambridge Disinformation Summit @jagolinzer.bsky.social @profsanderlinden.bsky.social
I'm giving the keynote presentation about conspiracy theories at the Forensic Mental Health Association of California (FMHAC) this Thursday. Looking forward to meeting some forensic colleagues.
New preprint shows what the media and clinicians have been saying for months—ChatGPT gives sycophantic, reinforcing responses to delusional statements. If you really understand how LLMs work—as next-word prediction engines—this should not be surprising in the least. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Two new reviews reinforce previous conclusions about cannabinoids for mental health: "Given the scarcity of evidence, the routine use of cannabinoids for the treatment of mental disorders and SUDs is currently rarely justified." www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
This is striking—we know political polarization is high in the US, but this poll finds that the MAJORITY of adults see their "fellow citizens" as morally bad. Moral judgments about sexual orientation & abortion are implicated, but I suspect it's more than that. www.pewresearch.org/religion/202...
My colleagues and I will be talking about AI and mental health/illness at the upcoming Northern CA Psychiatric Society Annual Meeting this weekend.
According to this logic—that attempted election interference is a just cause for an invasion— we should be declaring war on Donald Trump.
Going to war without Congressional approval is unconstitutional. People will die—and children have already died—from an illegal act. Why do we allow it to happen?
The Big Bang is what happened when someone pressed "reset" on our computer simulation. Judging by how things are going these days, it's probably time to hit the reset button again.
That two seemingly intelligent people can watch the same video from such opposite perspectives and draw such disparate perspectives—and then get clicks by arguing about it here—is such a sign of our times... and our downfall as a country.
Read this article and if it seems like hyperbole then see this from Trump. Anyone hoping the midterms are gonna be this country’s salvation better think again. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. —George Orwell, 1984
@burningambulance.bsky.social enjoying your book which is bringing back memories of Cecil gigs I saw back in the day.
Christmas presents… looking forward to reading this biography of Cecil Taylor by Philip Freeman.
Who else agrees that the most powerful person in science should be a scientist?
re: AI-associated psychosis, it would be helpful to better understand the 13% using chatbots for "musings and abstract discussions" www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...