Wake Forest News

Forbes

New research: Why fools are more influential than liars

Psychologists John Petrocelli, Elijah Rice and Joseph Curran ran three experiments on roughly 800 undergraduates total, testing what happens when people are repeatedly exposed to false claims from sources described as either liars or as people with no regard for whether what they’re saying is true, sometimes called “BS-ers” in the academic literature. The research confirms that we let people off the hook if they don’t care about the truth, but we don’t do the same for liars. What the new study adds to the conversation is an account of how much this costs us.

July 24, 2026

Foreign Policy Magazine

Trump needs to defy history to end the Iran war

“When U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to the memorandum of understanding with Iran in mid-June, he promised to broker a final deal that will “bring peace and security to the whole region.” Since then, however, negotiations have stalled, fighting has resumed, U.S. sanctions have been reimposed, and U.S. warships have once again blockaded Iran. In short, we’re back to the same stalemated war we thought we were done with a month ago,” writes politics professor Will Walldorf.

July 21, 2026