Prof. David Rand

How Is Academia Like Punk Rock? Ask Cornell Prof David Rand ’04

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Back at his alma mater, he’s making headlines for groundbreaking research melding AI, psychology, economics, poli sci, and more

Editor's note: Rand's appearance on Cornell's Research Matters podcast can be viewed here.

By Beth Saulnier

The métiers of professor and punker may seem worlds apart, but Cornell faculty member David Rand ’04 sees parallels—quite a lot of them, in fact. “I’ve got this spiel,” Rand says, “about how playing in a punk rock band and being an academic are extremely similar occupations.”

As he explains, both start with a germ of an idea—in science it’s a hypothesis or observation, in music it’s a riff, lyric, or bit of melody—that must be developed into something coherent, even beautiful.

“But you have to capture it—writing the paper or recording the song—in order to share it with other people, and that’s always the most painful part. But if you don’t, it doesn’t count for anything, because no one will find out about it.”

Then, Rand says, you put your creation out into the world, and hope people like it.

“You count your citations, or your plays on Spotify. And you go on tour; every time I give a seminar or a talk at a conference, I’m thinking, ‘I’m on tour, selling records.’”

David Rand performing in a punk rock band
Rocking out during his student days.

And yes: Rand knows a fair amount about both worlds.

As a teen growing up in Ithaca as the son of an applied math prof, Rand played in a series of punk bands—most notably Robot Goes Here—and eventually landed a record deal with an indie label.

But he was also an excellent student; he did the first-ever undergrad honors thesis in computational biology, then did a second thesis on the psychology of music, just for kicks.

Rand did the first-ever undergrad honors thesis in computational biology, then did a second thesis on the psychology of music, just for kicks.

These days, Rand is a star at his alma mater, where his multidisciplinary social science research straddles three colleges: his job is split 50-50 between Johnson (where he’s the Louis Professor of Management) and Bowers (in information science), plus a courtesy appointment in psychology in Arts & Sciences.

“He likes to study things that matter—that feel very contemporary, very urgent,” says colleague Steve Strogatz, the Winokur Distinguished Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Mathematics.

David Rand as a Cornell student holds up a certificate
As a senior, with his highest-honors certificate.

“He has a very skillful scientific flair. He finds ways to take questions that might seem amorphous and sharpen them into something you can really do science on. He’s done that time and time again, and it’s not easy—to be interested in current affairs, be a student of the zeitgeist, and translate it into solvable problems.”

Strogatz has known Rand for much of his life; Rand’s father is longtime friend and colleague Richard Rand, now emeritus. (His mother was the late Joyce Sirlin-Rand, a psychotherapist at Gannett Health Center and in private practice.)

After graduating from Arts & Sciences, Rand earned a doctorate in systems biology from Harvard and got tenure at Yale before moving to MIT.

His early work explored issues like human cooperation and greed, topics that still engage him. But it was his studies of misinformation and “fake news”—a focus of broad public interest during and after the 2016 presidential election—that made headlines.

He likes to study things that matter—that feel very contemporary, very urgent.

Prof. Steve Strogatz

In 2018, he and frequent collaborator Gordon Pennycook (now an associate professor of psychology on the Hill) published a paper in the journal Cognition titled “Lazy, Not Biased”—which found that people tend to fall for partisan-driven fake news for no more sinister a reason than they just don’t think about it enough.

It’s currently one of Rand’s most cited papers on Google Scholar, with more than 3,200 citations.

David Rand at Commencement with his father, Prof. Richard Rand, both in academic regalia
During Commencement with his father, Prof. Richard Rand.

“It’s not that when you think more, you get more biased—which is what people had been saying,” Rand explains.

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“What we showed, and replicated in lots of subsequent contexts, is that people are much more sensitive to whether something is true than whether it lines up with their politics. Getting them to think more makes them better at judging how accurate it is—and I think that’s an optimistic message.”

In 2023, they published a major study of COVID misinformation; involving 35,000 participants across 16 countries and six continents, it went on to win an award from the Behavioral Science & Policy Association.

People are much more sensitive to whether something is true than whether it lines up with their politics. Getting them to think more makes them better at judging how accurate it is—and I think that’s an optimistic message.

All told, Rand’s more than 250 peer-reviewed publications have been cited upwards of 77,000 times.

In recent years, he and Pennycook—along with their former MIT postdoc Tom Costello, now at Carnegie Mellon—have been studying the potential of artificial intelligence in helping combat misinformation. While Rand was at MIT, they launched DebunkBot; it invites users to present a conspiracy theory, which an AI chatbot then challenges through reasoned discussion.

The site, which has had more than 200,000 organic visitors, has been shown to convince about a quarter of users to abandon their chosen conspiracy.

Richard Rand, Gordon Pennycook, and David Rand, seated in Pennycook's office
With his dad (far left) and colleague Gordon Pennycook, in the latter's office.

“My eyes kind of popped out of my head,” Rand says of the result. “It really, durably changed people’s minds.”

Science published those findings in 2024, in what he calls “one of the first papers on humans and large language models interacting and changing people’s beliefs”; the work would go on to win a prestigious award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As Rand explains, DebunkBot works in part by obviating a common tactic—known as the “Gish Gallop” after a prominent creationist—in which the conspiracist launches a barrage of increasingly outlandish claims.

Rand’s more than 250 peer-reviewed publications have been cited upwards of 77,000 times.

“When you see an expert and a conspiracist debate, the expert often winds up looking bad because the conspiracist is like, ‘What about this crazy piece of evidence? What about this one?’” Rand says.

“The conspiracy theorist keeps saying crazy things and puts the expert on the defensive. But you can’t do that to a chatbot, because whatever you say, it can immediately come up with an answer.”

Rand joined the Cornell faculty—and returned to his hometown—in 2025. Having spent a sabbatical from MIT on the Hill, he and his wife (pediatrician Elizabeth Paci ’06) decided that Ithaca was a more livable place to raise their family. Now, their kids attend his former elementary school.

Prof. David Rand gives a talk
Lecturing during his time on the MIT faculty.

In addition to his teaching and research, Rand recently served on the Committee on the Future of the American University, which explored how Cornell can best serve tomorrow’s students and support its core missions.

And this fall, he and Pennycook are launching AI for an Informed Society; a cross-college initiative, it will develop ways to harness the technology to correct misconceptions on such topics as democracy, health, and the environment.

“David is very wide ranging and very curious,” Strogatz says. “He has taken ideas from all kinds of different subjects—computer science, sociology, psychology—and is always forging new connections. He seems to delight in asking these questions, and there’s a great spirit of playfulness in him. So I don’t get the sense that this is a job to him; I feel like he would do this for fun.”

(All images provided.)

Published August 13, 2026

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