John Cook is a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne, researching how to use critical thinking to counter misinformation. He obtained his PhD in cognitive science with the University of Western Australia, researching inoculation strategies to neutralise science misinformation. In 2007, he founded Skeptical Science, a website that won the 2011 Australia Museum Eureka Prize for the Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. In 2013, he published an award-winning paper quantifying the 97% scientific consensus on climate change which was highlighted by President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. In 2015 at the University of Queensland, he led the development of a Massive Open Online Course on climate science denial that has received 40,000+ enrollments from over 185 countries. He co-authored the college textbooks Climate Change: Examining the Facts and Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis, as well as the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand. He wrote and illustrated the book Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change, followed by development of the Cranky Uncle game, which combines critical thinking, cartoons, and gamification to build resilience against misinformation.

‍