One thing that really torques me is when people say "I did my research," when in fact what they did was a five-minute Google search until they found a couple of websites that agreed with what they already believed.
This is all too easy to do these days, now that any loudmouth with a computer can create a website, irrespective of whether what they have to say is well-thought-out, logical, or even true. (And I say that with full awareness that I myself am a loudmouth with a computer who created a website. To be fair, I've always been up front about the fact that I'm as fallible as the next guy and you shouldn't believe me out of hand any more than you do anyone else. I maintain that the best principle to rely on comes from Christopher Hitchens: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence." This applies to me as well, and I do try my best not to break that rule.)
The problem is, it leaves us laypeople at sea with regards to trying to figure out what (and whom) to believe. The solution -- or at least, a partial one -- comes with always cross-checking your sources. Find out where a claim came from originally -- there are all too many examples of crazy ideas working their way up the ladder of credibility, starting out in some goofy publication like The Weekly World News, but being handed off like the baton in some lunatic relay race until they end up in places like Pravda, The Korea Times, and Xinhua. (Yes, this has actually happened.)
The water gets considerably muddier when you throw Wikipedia into the mix. Wikipedia is a great example of the general rule of thumb that a source is only as accurate as the least accurate person who contributed to it. Despite that, I think it's a good resource for quick lookups, and use it myself for that sort of thing all the time. A study by Thomas Chesney found that experts generally consider Wikipedia to be pretty accurate, although the same study admits that others have concluded that thirteen percent of Wikipedia entries have errors (how serious those errors are is unclear; an error in a single date is certainly more forgivable than one that gives erroneous information about a major world event). Another study concluded that between one-half and one-third of deliberately inserted errors are corrected within forty-eight hours.
But still. That means that between one-half and two-thirds of deliberately inserted errors weren't corrected within forty-eight hours, which is troubling. Given the ongoing screeching about what is and is not "fake news," having a source that could get contaminated by bias or outright falsehood, and remain uncorrected, is a serious issue.
Plus, there's the problem with error sneaking in, as it were, through the back door. There have been claims that began as hoaxes, but then were posted on Wikipedia (and elsewhere) by people who honestly thought what they were stating was correct. Once this happens, there tends to be a snake-swallowing-its-own-tail pattern of circular citations, and before you know it, what was a false claim suddenly becomes enshrined as "fact."
Sometimes for years.
As an example, have you heard about the famous Scottish polymath Alan MacMasters, inventor of the electric toaster?
It was such a popular innovation that his name became a household word, especially in his native land. More than a dozen books (in various languages) list him as the popular kitchen appliance's inventor. The Scottish government's Brand Scotland website lauded MacMasters as an example of the nation's "innovative and inventive spirit." The BBC cooking show The Great British Menu featured an Edinburgh-based chef creating an elaborate dessert in MacMasters's honor. In 2018, the Bank of England polled the British public about who should appear on the newly-redesigned £50 note, and MacMasters was nominated -- and received a lot of votes. A Scottish primary school even had an "Alan MacMasters Day," on which the students participated in such activities as painting slices of toast and building pretend toasters out of blocks.
But before you proud Scots start raising your fists in the air and chanting "Scotland!", let's do this another way, shall we?
Back in 2012, a Scottish engineering student named -- you guessed it -- Alan MacMasters was in a class wherein the professor cautioned students against using Wikipedia as a source. The professor said that a friend of his named Maddy Kennedy had "even edited the Wikipedia entry on toasters to say that she had invented them." Well, the real MacMasters and a friend of his named Alex (last name redacted, for reasons you'll see momentarily) talked after class about whether it was really that easy. Turns out it was. So Alex decided to edit the page on toasters, took out Maddy Kennedy's name, and credited their invention to...
... his pal Alan MacMasters.
Alex got pretty elaborate. He uploaded a photograph supposedly of MacMasters (it's actually a rather clumsy digitally-modified photograph of Alex himself), provided biographical details, and generally tidied up the page to make it look convincing.
When Alex told MacMasters what he'd done, he laughed it off. "Alex is a bit of a joker, it's part of why we love him," MacMasters said. "The article had already been vandalized anyway, it was just changing the nature of the incorrect information. I thought it was funny, I never expected it to last."
Remember the errors that the Chesney study found didn't get corrected?
This was one of them.
The problem was suddenly amplified when The Mirror found the entry not long after it was posted, and listed it as a "life-changing everyday invention that put British genius on the map." By this time, both Alex and MacMasters had completely forgotten about what they'd done, and were entirely unaware of the juggernaut they'd launched. Over the following decade, the story was repeated over and over -- including by major news outlets -- and even ended up in one museum.
It wasn't until July 2022 that an alert fifteen-year-old happened on the Wikipedia article, and notified the editors that the photograph of MacMasters "looked faked." To their credit, they quickly recognized that the entire thing was fake, deleted the article, and banned Alex from editing Wikipedia for life. But by that time the hoax page had been up -- and used as a source -- for ten years.
(If you're curious, the actual credit for the invention of the electric toaster goes to Frank Shailor, who worked for General Electric, and submitted a patent for it in 1909.)
The problem, of course, is that if most of us -- myself included -- were curious about who invented the electric toaster, we'd do a fairly shallow search online, maybe one or two sources deep. If I then found that Brand Scotland, various news outlets, and a museum all agreed that it was invented by a Scottish guy named Alan MacMasters, I'm quite certain I'd believe it. Even if several of those sources led back to Wikipedia, so what?
Surely all of them couldn't be wrong, right? Besides, it's such a low-emotional-impact piece of information, who in their right mind would be motivated to falsify it?
So what reason would there be for me to question it?
Now, I'm aware that this is a pretty unusual case, and I'm not trying to make you disbelieve everything you read online. As I've pointed out before, cynicism is just as lazy as gullibility. And I'm still of the opinion that Wikipedia is a pretty good source, especially for purely factual information. But it is absolutely critical that we don't treat any source as infallible -- especially not those (1) for which we lack the expertise to evaluate, or (2) which contain bias-prone information that agrees with what we are already inclined to accept uncritically.
Confirmation bias is a bitch.
So the take-home lesson here is "be careful, and don't turn off your brain." It's not really, as some have claimed, that bullshit is more common now; take a look at any newspaper from the 1800s and you'll disabuse yourself of that notion mighty fast. It's just that the internet has provided an amazingly quick and efficient conduit for bullshit, so it spreads a great deal more rapidly.
It all goes back to the quote -- of uncertain provenance, but accurate whoever first said it -- that "a lie can travel all the way around the world while the truth is still lacing up its boots."
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