Knowledge falsification
deliberate misrepresentation of knowledge
Knowledge falsification is the deliberate misrepresentation of what one knows under perceived social pressures. The term was coined by Timur Kuran in his book Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification.
Motives
According to Kuran's analysis of preference falsification, knowledge falsification is usually undertaken to signal a preference that differs from one's private preference, in other words, to support preference falsification. Successful misrepresentation of one's private preferences requires hiding the knowledge on which they rest. Thus, people engage in preference falsification, or bolster it, by misrepresenting their information, interpretations, and understanding.
Such misrepresentation is a response to perceived social, economic, and political pressures. The perceived pressures could be partly, if not fully, imaginary. The pressures may be rooted in speech controls imposed by a state and enforced through state-enforced punishments. But, as with preference falsification, knowledge falsification need not be a response solely, or even mainly, to pressures from the state or some other organized political entity. The source of pressures is partly individuals seeking to display conformity to an agenda that appears politically popular.
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This entry incorporates text from “Knowledge falsification” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.