Misinformation is usually framed as a uniquely human failing, a byproduct of social media feeds, partisan politics, and click-driven news cycles. A growing body of research now argues something more unsettling, and more interesting, is going on: misleading signals and distorted information may be baked into the way living systems work, from bacteria to blue whales. If that is right, the problem I face when I scroll through a manipulated video on my phone is not an exception in nature but a late, digital twist on a very old biological story.
From human scandal to biological pattern
When people talk about misinformation, they tend to picture fake headlines, doctored images, or conspiracy theories spreading across platforms like X and Facebook. That focus on human media habits has shaped policy debates, from content moderation fights in Washington to fact checking partnerships with companies like Google and TikTok. Yet the new argument emerging from researchers is that the same basic pattern, information that misleads a receiver in ways that matter for survival or behavior, shows up across the tree of life, long before anyone invented a printing press or a smartphone.
In work described as New Study Reveals Misinformation Isn, the authors argue that what I call “misinformation” in a political meme is structurally similar to a deceptive mating call or a misleading chemical cue. They frame it as a fundamental feature of biological life at every scale, not a glitch that appeared with the internet. That shift in framing, from scandal to pattern, is what makes their claim so provocative.
How the researchers redefine misinformation
To make the leap from human media to biology, the researchers first had to define misinformation in a way that works for neurons, microbes, and news consumers alike. Instead of tying it to truth in a philosophical sense, they focus on how signals guide behavior inside a system. A piece of information counts as misinformation, in their view, when it causes an organism or a component of a system to act in a way that is misaligned with its environment or its own interests, whether that is a voter misled by a false statistic or a cell responding to a distorted chemical gradient.
That systems-level definition is what allows them to argue that misinformation is a basic property of organization itself. In the study described as Just, Human Problem, the authors explicitly connect misinformation to the way complex systems maintain and update internal models of the world. When those models are fed distorted inputs, the resulting actions can be maladaptive, yet the capacity for such distortion is inseparable from the capacity to process information at all.
Evidence from decades of biological research
To test whether this broader definition really applies beyond humans, the team did not rely on a single experiment. Instead, they reviewed decades of empirical and theoretical work on signaling in animals, plants, and microbes. That survey turned up examples ranging from dishonest mating displays in birds to misleading alarm calls in primates and even deceptive signaling in bacteria that manipulate competitors or hosts. The pattern that emerges is not a handful of oddities but a recurring theme in how organisms compete, cooperate, and survive.
According to a synthesis described under the heading So the, the authors argue that once you look across these literatures, misinformation appears as an inevitable biological reality across nature. They emphasize that to define and measure misinformation in a rigorous way, it has to be grounded in how information flows through systems, not just in whether a human observer labels a statement true or false.
Why evolution tolerates, and even rewards, misleading signals
If misinformation is so widespread in nature, the obvious question is why evolution has not eliminated it. The answer, the researchers suggest, is that misleading signals can be highly adaptive for the sender, even if they are costly for the receiver. A frog that exaggerates its size through a resonant call, or a plant that mimics the scent of a rival species to confuse pollinators, may gain a reproductive edge. Natural selection operates on individual fitness, not on some abstract ideal of accuracy, so any trait that helps genes propagate, including deception, can persist.
At the same time, receivers evolve countermeasures, from more discriminating sensory systems to social norms that punish liars. That arms race creates a dynamic equilibrium in which misinformation is never fully eradicated but also never completely dominates. The study framed as Fundamental Feature of Life Itself leans on this evolutionary logic to argue that the capacity for both honest and dishonest signaling is built into the architecture of living systems.
From bacteria to brains: scaling up the problem
Once I accept that bacteria can mislead one another with chemical cues, it becomes easier to see how similar dynamics might scale up in more complex organisms. In multicellular life, cells communicate through hormones, neurotransmitters, and electrical impulses, and those signals can also go wrong in ways that look like misinformation. Cancer cells, for example, can send growth signals that override the body’s regulatory checks, effectively tricking surrounding tissue into supporting a tumor’s expansion rather than suppressing it.
In nervous systems, the stakes rise again. Brains build internal models of the world based on sensory input, memory, and social learning, and those models guide behavior. When the inputs are systematically distorted, whether by a predator’s camouflage or a carefully edited video clip, the resulting actions can be badly misaligned with reality. The argument that misinformation is a basic feature of life at every scale, as presented in New Study Reveals Misinformation Isn, rests on this continuity from molecular signaling to conscious belief.
Humans are special, but not exempt
None of this means human misinformation is trivial or that I should shrug at a fabricated story about an election. What it does suggest is that my vulnerability to misleading claims is not a moral failure unique to modern society but an extension of older biological constraints. Human language, culture, and technology give misinformation unprecedented reach and speed, yet they operate on top of the same basic machinery of perception, inference, and communication that other species use. The difference is scale and complexity, not the existence of the phenomenon itself.
Researchers who study the social side of misinformation have been at pains to show that its history is long and complicated, stretching from rumors in ancient marketplaces to propaganda in twentieth century wars. Work highlighted under the heading Misinformation stresses that the internet is a convenient scapegoat for anxieties that predate social media. When I put that social history next to the biological argument, the continuity becomes even clearer.
Rethinking responsibility in a world full of bad information
Seeing misinformation as a basic feature of life raises uncomfortable questions about responsibility. If deceptive or distorted signals are everywhere in nature, it might be tempting to treat them as inevitable and give up on efforts to correct falsehoods in human societies. I think that would be a mistake. The fact that a trait is evolutionarily common does not make it ethically acceptable, and humans have capacities, from formal education to legal systems, that other species do not. Those tools give us leverage to shape information environments in ways that bacteria or birds cannot.
At the same time, the biological perspective can make our interventions more realistic. Instead of aiming for a world with no misinformation, which would be as unnatural as a forest with no camouflage, policymakers and technologists can focus on resilience. That might mean designing platforms that slow the spread of unverified claims, teaching media literacy in the same systematic way we teach reading, or building institutions that can rapidly correct errors without eroding trust. The study described as Human Problem, which involves Tim and other researchers, implicitly points in this direction by framing misinformation as something to be managed rather than eradicated.
What this means for how I navigate information now
For me as an individual, the idea that misinformation is a fundamental feature of life changes how I interpret my own information diet. Instead of assuming that accurate facts are the default and falsehoods are rare intrusions, I start from the opposite premise: any complex information environment will contain a mix of helpful and harmful signals. My job is not to find a perfectly clean stream, which probably does not exist, but to build habits and networks that filter, cross check, and contextualize what I see.
That mindset aligns with the systems view the researchers adopt when they talk about misinformation in biological systems. Whether the system is a bacterial colony, a coral reef, or a social network, the key question is how it processes and corrects errors, not whether errors appear at all. By treating misinformation as a structural feature rather than a passing fad, the work summarized in researchers argue invites me to think less about blaming individual bad actors and more about strengthening the informational ecosystems I depend on.
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