New Study Finds Misinformation Is a Fundamental Feature of Living Systems

Misinformation spans the entire natural world, from bacteria to birds to human immune systems, according to a groundbreaking scientific review published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. The comprehensive study by Cornell University researchers offers the first systematic examination of how misinformation operates across biological systems.

Far from being a modern human problem amplified by social media, researchers argue that misinformation is an unavoidable consequence of how organisms communicate. The study defines misinformation as any message that causes a recipient to form beliefs that diverge from reality, leading to suboptimal decisions.

“The transmission and use of misinformation is widespread in biological systems spanning levels of organization,” the researchers write. “The production and transmission of misinformation is probably an inevitable property that inherits from fundamental constraints on biological communication systems, rather than a pathology that lies apart from the normal functioning of such systems.”

This perspective challenges conventional views of misinformation as uniquely human, instead positioning it as a fundamental biological process that shapes behavior across species and scales.

In bird communities, researchers highlight how “false alarm cascades” demonstrate misinformation spread. When one bird mistakenly sounds a warning call, entire flocks may panic and take flight, even without any actual threat. Some species, like great tits, actively exploit this vulnerability, using deceptive alarm calls to scatter competitors from food sources. Studies show that approximately two-thirds of great tit alarm calls in feeding groups are false alarms deliberately used to gain resource advantages.

At the microscopic level, bacteria engage in their own forms of deception. Species like E. coli and Salmonella can hijack chemical signaling systems used by microbial communities to coordinate group behavior. By manipulating these “quorum sensing” signals, certain bacteria interfere with other species’ ability to accurately gauge population density, creating a competitive edge through biochemical misinformation.

Even within single organisms, misinformation can cause significant dysfunction. The mammalian immune system relies on complex chemical communication networks to detect and respond to threats. When these signals misfire, the body can turn against itself.

“When initial immune responses are misdirected at host tissue, ensuing cytokine-induced inflammation can be viewed as a large-scale misinformation cascade that results in the body’s defense system attacking its own tissue,” the researchers explain. This reframes autoimmune disorders as biological misinformation problems, where defense mechanisms mistake self for invader.

The researchers identify several mechanisms by which misinformation emerges in biological networks. Sometimes, organisms simply encounter rare or ambiguous signals, becoming “misinformed by chance.” More commonly, misinformation stems from misinterpretation, as organisms rely on imperfect heuristics to decode messages.

In social groups, misinformation can be amplified through feedback loops. The study describes how “collective distortion” can lock groups into stable but incorrect states—similar to human echo chambers—where large numbers behave in ways “uncorrelated with the true state of the environment.” When this happens, “individuals remain locked in the wrong state because they rely on observing others who are, themselves, in the wrong state.”

These biological patterns have striking parallels to human communication systems. Processes such as message mutation (similar to rumors distorting as they spread) and loss of context (comparable to decontextualized social media posts) appear across species. While the researchers avoid making simplistic analogies to online misinformation, they suggest that underlying principles governing biological communication networks might inform our understanding of human information systems.

The study also points to practical applications. Understanding how misinformation functions in biological systems could lead to novel therapeutic strategies. For example, researchers highlight how “therapeutics that aim to disrupt the perception of quorum-sensing signals… subvert bacterial decision-making” by altering how microbes interpret population density messages. This approach could lead to anti-infective treatments that work not by killing pathogens but by confusing their communication systems.

Similarly, insights into how immune cells regulate false alarms might inspire treatments for autoimmune disorders by controlling misinformation spread within the body’s defense networks.

By establishing misinformation as a fundamental property of communication in complex systems, the study calls for a new interdisciplinary approach spanning ecology, evolution, neuroscience, network theory, and information science.

“We should expect to find socially transmitted misinformation in virtually any biological system in which messages are transmitted from one agent to another,” the researchers conclude. “The class of such systems is vast. It includes immune systems, brains, biofilms and other cellular collectives, persistent animal groups and ephemeral aggregations, and indeed our own social networks and communication systems.”

This biological perspective suggests that to truly understand—and perhaps combat—misinformation in human societies, we may need to look far beyond digital media and into the fundamental communication patterns that have evolved across all living systems.