The fragility of truth: Social epistemology in a time of polarization and pandemic Laurence J. Kirmayer Abstract This essay introduces a thematic issue of Transcultural Psychiatry presenting selected papers from the 2022 McGill Advanced Study Institute in Cultural Psychiatry on “The Fragility of Truth: Social Epistemology in a Time of Polarization and Pandemic.” The COVID-19 pandemic, political polarization, and the climate crisis have revealed that large segments of the population do not trust the best available knowledge and expertise in making vital decisions regard- ing their health, the governance of society, and the fate of the planet. What guides information-seeking, trust in authority, and decision-making in each of these domains? Articles in this issue include case studies of the dynamics of misinformation and disinformation; the adaptive functions and pathologies of belief, paranoia, and conspiracy theories; and strategies to foster and maintain diverse knowledge ecologies. Efforts to understand the psychological dynamics of pathological con- viction have something useful to teach us about our vulnerability as knowers and believers. However, this individual psychological account needs to be supplemented with a broader social view of the politics of knowledge and epistemic authority that can inform efforts to create healthy information ecologies and strengthen the civic institutions and practices needed to provide well-informed pictures of the world as a basis for deliberative democracy, pluralism, and co-existence. Keywords epistemic communities, misinformation, polarization, science, social epistemology Introduction This editorial essay introduces a thematic issue of Transcultural Psychiatry that presents selected papers from the 2022 McGill Advanced Study Institute (ASI) in Cultural Psychiatry on “The Fragility of Truth: Social Epistemology in a Time of Polarization and Pandemic.” 1 The COVID-19 pandemic, political polarization, and the climate crisis have revealed that large segments of the popu- lation do not trust the best available knowledge and expertise in making vital decisions regarding their health, the govern- ance of society, and the fate of the planet. Finding reliable information to make decisions presents enormous chal- lenges in a world in which the Internet increases access to information, accelerates the viral spread of images and ideas, and creates loops that amplify extreme positions. Many people seem to be captured by an array of increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories and ill-informed interpretations of events. The interdisciplinary ASI workshop and confer- ence considered a broad range of questions raised by this situation, including: What guides information-seeking, trust in institutional authority, and decision-making in each of these domains? Are we facing a new level of self- destructive irrationality in human behavior, or has the age of pandemics and the digital niche simply revealed the fra- gility of human knowledge-seeking? Is conflict over meaning along tribal lines intrinsic to human thought and sociality? How do people make sense of complex events and chart a course in a sea of information, misinformation, and deliberate disinformation? How have social media changed the dynamics of information seeking, certainty, and authority? What role can and should scientific and technocratic expertise play in these dynamics? Epistemology is concerned with how we acquire knowl- edge and determine what is true. Social epistemology recog- nizes that knowing and believing are not simply individual cognitive processes but fundamentally based on participa- tion in cultures, communities, and social practices Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Corresponding author: Laurence J. Kirmayer, Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University, 1033 Pine Ave. West, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1A1, Canada Email: laurence.kirmayer@mcgill.ca Editorial Transcultural Psychiatry 2024, Vol. 61(5) 701–713 © The Author(s) 2024 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/13634615241299556 journals.sagepub.com/home/tps