Online games originally designed to stop people falling for conspiracy theories could also help prevent people from becoming radicalised into terrorism in war-torn countries.

When people in Iraq were asked to play such a game, it improved their ability to spot manipulative messaging from fake terrorist recruiters. “It was very positive to see that this helped in a non-Western context under challenging real-world conditions,” says at the University of Cambridge, who presented the work at Â鶹´«Ă˝ Live on 8 October.

Techniques like these were originally devised to “inoculate” people against conspiracy theories, such as the idea that the World Trade Center buildings in New York collapsed on 9/11 due to previously planted explosives.

In a similar way to how vaccines work, the idea is to expose people to a weakened dose of conspiracy theory arguments to boost their resistance to real persuasion attempts. The approach has been shown to work in countries such as the UK and the US.

Van der Linden’s team has adapted this strategy into a 10-minute online game called MindFort that aims to reduce people’s likelihood of being recruited by terrorist organisations, such as ISIS. The game teaches people about such groups’ recruitment strategies, such as isolating people from their friends and asking them to carry out small acts of violence that make them feel committed.

They tested the game on 191 adults younger than 40 years old living in two regions of Iraq that had previously been under ISIS control. Half were asked to play MindFort while the rest played Tetris.

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After the game, those who played MindFort performed significantly better at rating WhatsApp conversations on whether one person was trying to manipulate the other than those who played Tetris. “This is the first time this kind of technique has shown success in a [war-torn] country like Iraq,” says van der Linden.

at Georgetown University in Washington DC says the approach is worth exploring further, but that other population-level strategies are needed too.

“This kind of exercise is very useful, but it doesn’t get at the large-scale processes involved,” he says. “Radicalisation doesn’t take place in individuals in isolation. It’s a dynamic process where groups and nations push each other to more extreme positions.”

Deradicalisation programmes are the bedrock of counter-terrorism strategies in many countries. They aim to combat extremism by identifying individuals who have become radicalised, or are in danger of becoming so, and reintegrating them to the mainstream using psychological and religious counselling as well as vocational training.

In the UK, , 4000 people were reported to the government’s anti-terror programme. The majority – 70 per cent – are suspected Islamic extremists, but about a quarter are far-right radicals, and that number is growing.

Critics fear that these programmes criminalise and stigmatise communities, families and individuals. In addition, there are questions about who governments collaborate with for information and whether public servants should be obliged to report potential radicals.

There is also very little evidence that the programmes work. Most fail to assess the progress of participants, and rates of recidivism are rarely studied. In a report in 2016, the UK parliament’s human rights committee warned that  counter-extremism strategy was based on unproven theories and risks making the situation worse.

In the wake of the Manchester terror attack in May 2017, for countering extremism which will seek to understand the scale of the problem and advise the government on the best response. The organisation’s leader, Sara Khan, said that extremists have become “increasingly professional” and are “thriving” in some areas of the UK.

The key to combating extremism lies in addressing its social roots, and intervening early, before anyone becomes a “devoted actor” willing to lay down their lives for a cause, says  at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Resolution of Intractable Conflicts. “Until then, there are all sorts of things you can do.” One of the most effective counter measures, he says, is community engagement. High-school football and the scouts movement have been effective responses to antisocial behaviour among the disenfranchised children of US immigrants, for example.

Another promising avenue is to break down stereotypes, says social psychologist . These are not necessarily religious or racial stereotypes, but generalised stereotypes we all hold about people around us. When we categorise one another, we are particularly concerned with social status and competition, viewing people of low status as incompetent, and competitors as untrustworthy. Throughout history, violent acts and genocides have tended to be perpetrated against high-status individuals with whom we compete for resources, and who .

Fiske’s group has found ways to disrupt stereotypes by  to achieve a common goal, for example. Trivial contact involving “food, festivals and flags” won’t cut it, she says. It has to be a goal people care about and are prepared to invest in, such as a work project or community build. Here, success depends on understanding the minds of your collaborators – “rehumanising” them.

Ebola virus, the bacteria that causes plague, a pandemic strain of flu – if any of these pathogens could be turned into bioweapons by terrorists or rogue nation states, they would threaten humanity. And information that might aid that weaponisation process is in danger of leaking out, says the US .

Most life scientists have little awareness of biosecurity issues, according to a National Academies report released today. And it says there are “multiple shortcomings” in the systems designed to stop potentially risky research from being published.

Current US policies restrict research on 15 pathogens or toxins classed as “dual-use research of concern”, in other words, work that could both benefit medicine and be used to kill.

The bacterium that causes anthrax is on this list. In 2001, a former US government scientist sent anthrax spores in the mail, infecting 22 people and killing five of them.

But this list should no longer be considered exhaustive, warns the report, partly because new techniques such as CRISPR make it easier for microbes to be genetically edited or for novel life forms to be made from scratch.

“The driving vision of synthetic biologists is that genes can be put together like Lego bricks,” says of King’s College London, who wasn’t involved in the report. “We have focused on locking up dangerous pathogens so people don’t have access to them. But today you can just build them in the lab.”

Mail-order virus

Earlier this year, researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, announced they had synthesised a virus called . While harmless in itself, horsepox is a relative of deadly smallpox. As smallpox vaccination stopped in the 1970s when the disease was eradicated, people under 40 would have no immunity to it, says of University College London.

The horsepox work has yet to be published. Journal editors are supposed to consider security risks before publishing any research with dual-use potential. In 2011, a US biosecurity committee asked Science not to publish research on how bird flu could be genetically altered to make it spread between people more easily, although it was eventually cleared for publication.

But the National Academies report points out that there are other ways of disseminating such knowledge, such as “preprint” websites. The rules on potentially risky research only apply to institutions that get federal funding – not private companies or the “do-it-yourself” community.

Lentzos says advances in drug delivery techniques also raise concerns. “We are seeing a lot of new delivery techniques for vaccines and gene therapies, like sprays and inhalers, that might be used to deliver weaponised forms of these drugs,” she says. “You can imagine a swarm of drones at a public event.”

It is hard to know where to draw the line, says of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Maryland. “You don’t want to curtail research being done for beneficial reasons unnecessarily,” she says. “There’s a plethora of things that could be misused. Nature has a lot of ways to kill people.”

The report doesn’t attempt to offer any solutions to the problem. It concludes that despite decades of effort, there is little international consensus on policies to address the risks.