Fake news and skepticism

Fake news has been in the news of late. As if it were something new.

Misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, yellow journalism. They have been with us through the ages. Whether for political or military advantage, religious supremacy, commercial gain, or just malicious gossip, distortion of the truth has a long, sad human history.

In those olden days, the creators and disseminators of widespread untruthful information tended to be state actors or large organizations simply because of the cost of such an endeavor. Gutenberg’s printing press lowered the cost barrier, but it remained relatively high.

More recently but pre-internet, we relied on the reporting and editorial prowess of respected news organizations to gather, proctor, authenticate, and disseminate our news. We knew to trust the news arms of CBS, NBC, and ABC. The New York Times was beyond reproach. For nearby news, our local newspapers provided the same service.

But these brick and mortar news organizations, with reporters and editors, correspondents and investigators, newsrooms and presses, cost money. A lot of money. These costs need be paid by advertising or subscriptions or both.

What is different now is the existence of the internet, social media, and the wild proliferation of smart phones. We can consume news twenty four hours a day, share it, comment on it, be thrilled or repelled by it, and all this for free. (Well, not counting the cost of our phone and wireless bill).

But it is a basic dictum that accurate information is at once valuable and expensive. Free information is not always false and expensive information is not always true, but the odds are very much in favor.

Today, with the wonder of the internet, anyone can publish “news” at his or her whim. And with a modicum of skill, can even create a Facebook page or website which appears to be an authentic replica of a trusted news source.

What is an earnest seeker of truth to do?

The first is to recognize that the major news organizations all have a presence on the internet and still provide that valuable service of authentication. They are not perfectly unbiased, but tend to cluster within center-left to center-right views.  The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are not likely to outright lie to you, but they will each have their own partisan tilt. A well-informed reader might read them both. (Subscriptions could be an expensive problem which a visit to your local library might solve).

Outside of well-known sources, our next best defense is a healthy sense of skepticism. Particularly alluring are stories which pander to our own biases. It is with these that we must be most skeptical. Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring in a pizzeria? Donald Trump was a member of the KKK? Really?

The more your personal vibes are pleasantly resonating with this kind of news, the more the need for skepticism. Don’t “like,” don’t share, don’t comment, until you’ve confirmed the report from a trusted, mainstream source.

And please realize that your favorite sites, the ones that always resonate with your belief system, are not likely to be unbiased. Breitbart and ThinkProgress are guaranteed to each have their own strong partisan slant. Depending on your politics, you will likely love one and hate the other. But neither are giving you a balanced view of the facts.

Here is another litmus test. If your news source doesn’t occasionally make you a bit uncomfortable, if it always panders to your worldview, then you are most likely not getting straight news.

Become a savvy internet user. Websites and Facebook pages can be made to look like an authentic news site, with page names or URLs which are not-quite-right. In this age of disintermediation, we must all become our own fact checkers. Be skeptical, don’t believe everything you see.

And finally, seek out viewpoints that make you a bit uncomfortable, and try to understand them. That is how we grow.

Now go forth and conquer!

You can die of a broken heart and other surprising science

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

In 1899, the Commissioner of the US Patent Office, Charles H. Duell, is said to have exhorted that “everything that can be invented has been invented.” While possibly apocryphal, it was a common sentiment of the time. After all, electricity had been tamed, the light bulb had replaced whale oil lamps, powerful steam locomotives traversed the continent, and Herman Hollerith had developed the Census Tabulating Machine. Indeed, what else could possibly be left to invent?

In retrospect, we see how silly was that view. But that is the nature of scientific certitude. Science is an ongoing process. Things we hold to be true are only working models of reality, and reality is often more complex or strange than we think. When our models (theories) disagree with reality, we must quickly develop new theories.

Science, that is, our view of reality, changes all of the time. For instance, here are a handful of new theories published in just the last few months.

• You can literally die of a broken heart. Researchers in the U.K. studied 30,000 people whose spouses had died and found a significant (nearly double) risk of heart attack or stroke. This risk fades in subsequent months and is correlated with higher levels of inflammatory cells in the blood (which gradually return to normal). (JAMA Internal Medicine, April 2014)

• We may have company in other dimensions. Researchers using a sophisticated telescope in Antarctica have for the first time discovered primordial gravitational waves, thus buttressing the case for inflationary expansion. This theory posits that during the first trillionth of a trillionth of a second, the universe expanded from an invisible speck to near its current size. If true, our universe may be “one of many universes floating like bubbles in a glass of champagne.” (Scientific American, March 31, 2014). 

• Beans beat beef, but even then in temperance. Two recent studies support a theory that too much protein has negative effects on human health. The primary study found that people age 50-65, with a diet where protein is restricted to 10% of total calories, suffered cancer and diabetes at significantly lower rates. Those eating a moderate protein diet (up to 19%), were three times more likely to die from cancer. Oddly enough, the effect reversed after age 65, when a moderate protein diet seems slightly protective. In good news for vegetarians, vegetable protein was found to be more healthy than animal protein overall. (Cell Metabolism, March 2014)

• Dark skin is evolutionarily superior in the tropics. An English researcher studying 40 years of data found that albinos living in areas of high ultraviolet radiation (e.g., Africa, Central America) contract skin cancer and often die young before reproducing. Theorizing that early hominids were pale skinned and largely hairless (to control body temperature in tropical heat), he proposes that nonmelanoma skin cancers killed the lighter skinned and spared the darker skinned. This evolutionary force self-selected dark skin as a superior attribute for survival. (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, January 2014)

• Death rays may not be just science fiction. Physicists at the University of Maryland have demonstrated a one-two combo punch that opens the way for laser weapons. High power lasers tend to heat the atmosphere as they pass through it. The low-density air thus created acts like a lens, defocusing and weakening the beam. Instead, by pulsing a low-power laser several times over 7 billionths of a second, a “tunnel in the sky” is created through which a high energy blast could follow. In addition to death rays, such technology could be used to power high altitude aircraft. (Physical Review X, February 2014)

Science is constantly evolving, constantly surprising. To not be open to multiple possibilities is crippling to a scientist. A close-minded scientist is like a blind marksman; brilliant, perhaps, but unable to hit a moving target. That is why the most prized scientific quality is a finely honed sense of skepticism.

A major mistake for a serious scientist is to follow the herd, but it is oh so hard to resist. Usually grants and funding follow the herd; taking another path can lead to poverty. Disagreeing with the herd will also get you shunned, criticized, and sometimes demonized. For instance, Professor Lawrence Torcello seriously proposes jailing those who disagree with him on climate science.

Here’s a famous example. Dr. Barry Marshall and research partner Robin Warren were all alone in their thinking. The entire world’s scientific community ridiculed their theory, but they persevered. Peptic ulcers are caused by bacteria, not spicy foods or stress. Next time you get a simple antibiotic to cure one, won’t you be glad that they remained steadfast?