Originally published in the French language by Presses Universitaires de France, from pages 3-146 and 275-325 (of the French Edition) �La d�emocratie des cr�edules, Presses Universitaires de France, 2013.

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Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: The Empire of Doubt -- Chapter 1: More is Less: Mental Avarice and Mass Information -- 1.1. The revolution of the cognitive market -- 1.2. Amplification of the confirmation bias -- 1.3. The Seattle affair -- 1.3.1. The Wason experiment -- About our mental avarice -- 1.4. The theorem of information credulity -- "Personally, to make sure, I check on the Internet" -- 1.5. Filter bubbles -- Chapter 2: Why Does the Internet Side with Dubious Ideas? -- 2.1. The utopia of the knowledge society and the empire of beliefs -- 2.2. The ditherer's problem -- 2.3. Competition between belief and knowledge on the Internet -- 2.4. Psychokinesis -- 2.5. The Loch Ness Monster -- 2.6. Aspartame -- 2.7. Crop circles -- 2.8. Astrology -- 2.9. Overview of results -- 2.10. How can we explain these results? -- 2.11. The Titanic syndrome -- 2.12. When Olson's paradox plays against knowledge -- 2.13. Charles Fort, his life, and his works in a few words -- 2.14. Fort products: argumentative mille-feuilles -- 2.15. The sharing of the arguments of conviction -- 2.16. A Fortean product in the making: Michael Jackson's fake death -- 2.17. When Fort reinforces Olson -- 2.18. Would you believe it! -- 2.19. It is all in the Bible, all of it -- 2.20. The transparency paradox -- 2.21. A shorter incubation period -- Chapter 3: Competition Serves the Truth, Excessive Competition Harms It -- 3.1. Michael Jackson's son, abused by Nicolas Sarkozy -- 3.2. A "prisoner's dilemma" kind of situation -- 3.3. Presidential unfaithfulness and the burnt Koran -- 3.4. The IRC curve (information reliability/competition) -- Chapter 4: What Can Be Done? From the Democracy of the Gullible to the Democracy of Enlightenment -- 4.1. The hope of the astrophysicist -- 4.2. The bad education.

4.3. When gullibility looks like intelligence -- 4.4. The sum of imperfections -- 4.5. Toward cognitive demagogy -- 4.6. How to keep the illusion scholar inside us in check -- 4.7. Declaration of mental independence -- 4.8. The fourth power -- 4.9. A new form of scientific communication -- 4.10. A new militancy -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.

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