On an otherwise unremarkable afternoon at Riverside Square Mall, the kind of afternoon when parents pushed strollers through the bright corridors and teenagers lingered outside the shoe stores with milkshakes in hand, the everyday rhythm of shopping was shattered—literally and emotionally. A smash-and-grab robbery had erupted inside a high-end jewelry store near the center of the mall, and the heavy tools used to crack open glass display cases produced a sound so sharp and unnatural that it ricocheted through the tiled concourse like a thunderclap. In that split second, the collective imagination of hundreds of shoppers did what it has…

Every day, millions of people open their phones and scroll through a barrage of health information: a video of someone claiming a miraculous cure for arthritis, a social media post warning about a common vaccine, a celebrity endorsement of a detox tea that promises to “cleanse your organs.” Some of this content is harmless. A lot of it is not. It can lead people to delay necessary care, stop taking prescribed medication, or fall for expensive, worthless supplements. It can cause panic, distrust, and division. And because false claims are often more dramatic and emotional than the cautious language of…