Meet the minds behind
DebunkBot! DebunkBot was created by researchers passionate about understanding how beliefs are formed — and how conversations can help us rethink them. Here's who we are.

Tom Costello

Tom Costello

Assistant Professor, Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University

  • Affiliated Faculty, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, CMU
  • Research Affiliate, MIT Sloan School of Management
  • Research integrates psychology, political science, and human-computer interaction to study viewpoints and belief change
  • Focuses on impacts of artificial intelligence on the information ecosystem
  • Published in Science, Nature, Nature Medicine, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Bulletin, Trends in Cognitive Sciences
  • Featured in The New York Times, BBC World News, NPR
  • Awards: APS Rising Star, Klarman Fellowship, Heritage Dissertation Award, JS Tanaka Dissertation Award
David Rand

David Rand

Professor, Information Science, Marketing & Management Communications, Cornell University

  • Research combines behavioral experiments and computational models to understand attitudes, beliefs, and choices
  • Focuses on dialogues with generative AI to correct inaccurate beliefs, political psychology, polarization, and cooperation
  • Published 200+ papers in Nature, Science, PNAS, American Economic Review, Psychological Science, Management Science, New England Journal of Medicine, American Journal of Political Science
  • Written for The New York Times, Wired, New Scientist, Psychological Observer
  • Advises Google, Meta, TikTok, US & UK governments
  • Awards: Wired Smart List, Pop!Tech Fellow, Greer Memorial Prize, Fact-Checking Researcher of the Year, FABBS Early Career Impact Award, Best 40-Under-40 Business School Professor
Gordon Pennycook

Gordon Pennycook

Associate Professor, Psychology, Cornell University

  • Himan Brown Faculty Fellow
  • Adjunct Professor, University of Regina's Hill/Levene Schools of Business
  • Editorial roles: Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Thinking & Reasoning, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, Judgment and Decision Making
  • Member, Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists
  • Background: BA (Hons) University of Saskatchewan, MA & PhD University of Waterloo, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale, taught at Yale School of Management
  • Awards: APS Rising Star, Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, & Cognitive Science, International Social Cognition Network, Psychonomics Society, Ig Nobel Peace Prize (2016)
David Spitz

David Spitz

Software Developer

  • Building real-world experiments to study and combat misinformation
  • Taking advantage of cutting-edge technology to adapt to the age of Internet politics
  • Background: BS in Computer Science from The University of Chicago, graduated 2024
About us