Sifting fact from fiction

President-elect Donald Trump's latest ploy, any time he is criticized in the press, is to claim that what they're saying is "fake news."  (That, and to threaten to revoke their right to cover his speeches.)

Five days ago, he tweeted (of course, because that's how adults respond to criticism) that the Russian dossier alleged to have compromising information on him was "fake news and crap."  The, um, interaction he is alleged to have had with some Russian prostitutes was likewise "fake news, phony stuff, it did not happen."  About CNN, he said the "organization’s terrible...  You are fake news."  He's banned reporters from The Washington Post from attending his events, calling it "incredibly inaccurate... phony and dishonest."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

There are two things that are troubling about this.

One is that Trump himself has been responsible for more than one demonstrably false claim intended to do nothing but damage his opponents.  Kali Holloway of AlterNet found fourteen, in fact.  Trump either created himself, or was responsible for publicizing, claims such as the following:

• Barack Obama was a Kenyan Muslim and never attended Columbia University
• Hillary Clinton was covering up a chronic debilitating illness and was too sick to serve
• Ted Cruz's father was involved in the plot to kill John F. Kennedy
• Thousands of Muslims in and around New York City had a public demonstration to cheer the events of 9/11
• Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered
• 97% of the murders in the United States are blacks killing other blacks (when confronted on this blatantly false claim, he said, "It was just a retweet... am I going to check every statistic?")
• Millions of votes in the presidential election were cast illegally
• Climate change is a Chinese hoax
• Vaccines cause autism -- and that the doctors opposing this fiction deliberately lied to cover it up

And so on and so forth.

So Trump calling out others for fake news should definitely be an odds-on contender for the "Unintentional Irony of the Year" award for 2017.

The more upsetting aspect of this, however, is that Trump is implying that you can't trust anything on the media -- except, of course, what comes out of his mouth.  The implication is that nothing you see on the news or read in the newspaper is true, that the default stance is to say it's all fake.

This is a profoundly disturbing claim.  For one thing, as I've said many times before, cynicism is no more noble (or correct) than gullibility; disbelieving everything is exactly as lazy and foolish as believing everything.  For another, the media are really our only way of finding out what is happening in the world.  Without media, we would not only have no idea what was going on in other countries, our own government would be operating behind a smokescreen, their machinations invisible to everyone but those in on the game.

Which is a fine way to turn a democracy into a dictatorship.

There is some small kernel of truth to the accusation, however; it is true that all media are biased.  That CNN and MSNBC slant to the left and Fox and The Wall Street Journal slant to the right is so obvious that it hardly bears mention.  To jump from there to "everything they say is a lie," however, is to embrace a convenient falsehood that allows you to reject everything you hear and read except for what fits with your preconceived notions -- effectively setting up your own personal confirmation bias as the sine qua non of understanding.

The truth, of course, is more nuanced than that, and also far more powerful.  We are all capable of sifting fact from fiction, neither believing everything nor rejecting everything.  It's called critical thinking, and in these rather fractious times it's absolutely... well, critical.  As biologist Terry McGlynn put it, "When we teach our students to distinguish science from pseudoscience, we are giving them the skills to identify real and fake journalism."

I won't lie to you.  Sorting fact from fiction in the media (or anywhere else) is hard work, far harder than simply accepting what we'd like to believe and rejecting what we'd like to be false.  But it's possible, and more than that, it's essential.  Check sources -- even if (especially if) they're from your favorite media source.  Check them using sources that have a different slant.  Go to the original documents instead of merely reading what someone else has written about them.  Apply good rules of thumb like Ockham's Razor and the ECREE (Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence) principle.  Pay special attention to claims from people who have proven track records of lying, or people who are making claims outside of their area of expertise.

Donald Trump's snarling of "fake news, phony journalism" every time he's criticized should immediately put you on notice that what he's saying is questionable -- not (again) that it should be disbelieved out of hand, but that it should be scrutinized.  Over the next four years, people on both sides of the aisle are going to have to be on guard -- never in my memory has the country been so polarized, so ready to begin that precipitous slide into sectarian violence that once begun is damn near impossible to halt.  Our leaders are showing no inclination to address the problems we face honestly and openly -- so it falls to us as responsible citizens to start sifting through their claims more carefully instead of simply accepting whatever half-truths or outright lies fit our preconceived notions.

Dinosaurs, the Flood, and attempted murder

I have some friends who are currently trying to kill me.

At least, that's the only interpretation I can put on the fact that their Christmas gift to me was a copy of Dinosaurs for Kids by Ken Ham.  According to the back, amongst other things, we can learn from this book "the truth behind museum exhibits and flawed evolutionary timelines."

So my conclusion is that these friends were hoping that I would read this book and have an aneurysm, or possibly burst into flames.  Or both simultaneously.

But I'm pleased to say that their nefarious little plot did not succeed, which is why I'm here today to tell you about it, and to quote for you a paragraph from the final page of the book, to wit:

Follow the Truth!  While the Bible helps us to understand how and when dinosaurs lived, and even why they died, the Bible doesn't give us highly descriptive details about each and every one.  It gives us the big picture of history so we can develop a general understanding of these creatures.  Then we can use observational science to help us fill in some of the details and increase our understanding -- all the while knowing that nothing in real science can or will contradict God's Holy Word.

In other words, we can accept everything that science says about anything unless it tells us something different than what we want to hear.

But I decided to write about this today in Skeptophilia not only to celebrate my escaping a near brush with death, but because Ken Ham and dinosaurs are in the news for a different reason. Apparently Ham is pissed off at The Washington Post because they claimed that he thinks that dinosaurs were wiped out by the Great Flood.  So he dealt with this the way any reasonable, intelligent adult would; he posted a snarky comment about it on Twitter.

"Hey @washingtonpost," Ken tweeted, "we at @ArkEncounter have NEVER said Dinosaurs were wiped out during Flood-get your facts right!"

In fact he went on to elaborate that the dinosaurs didn't die in the Great Flood; they actually made it onto the Ark along with two (or seven, depending on which biblical account you believe) of each of the six billion-odd species on Earth, where they lived in cages until the waters magically went somewhere and Noah let them all go on the side of Mount Ararat, and became extinct afterwards because of other stuff, possibly because humans liked the taste of T. rex steaks too much.

Because that's ever so much more believable.

Just remember, children: Velociraptors used those nasty claws to peel oranges.

Note some other interesting features about the above illustration.  First, the Deinonychus appears to be levitating.  Maybe the Law of Gravity was also optional in the Garden of Eden.  Second, isn't it funny how Adam and Eve are always shown as naked, but there with strategically placed bushes to hide their naughty bits?

Like in the following photograph of foreplay with a voyeur dinosaur:

And the following, in which the lamb is clearly thinking, "Dude.  Find a different animal to block the view of your penis next time."

Implying all of the naked fun we could be having if the whole Apple Incident hadn't intervened.  But, after all, this is the kind of lunacy we've come to expect from Ken Ham et al., who think that a miscopied and mistranslated bunch of archaic manuscripts written by some Bronze-Age sheep herders are the best tool we have for understanding biology and interpreting human behavior.

So that's our dip in the deep end for today.  Me, I'm going to go have a second cup of coffee, and plot revenge against the friends who gave me the dinosaur book.  I think I'm going to have to work pretty hard to come up with anything near as clever, and that's assuming that reading Ham's book doesn't have some kind of delayed reaction side effects.  If you see a headline in tomorrow's news that says, "Upstate NY Man Bursts Into Flame, Dies," you'll know what happened.

The price of free speech

It's been kind of a grim week here at Skeptophilia.  The news over the last few days has been seriously depressing, what with the current political situation, the attack in Orlando (and the chest-thumping by ideologues that followed), and the ongoing turmoil in so many parts of the world.  And much as I'd like to return to my happy world of making fun of people who believe in Bigfoot, aliens, and telepathy, I'm afraid we have (at least) one more rather dismal topic to cover.

This one comes up because of Newt Gingrich, who (according to informed sources) is currently hoping to be chosen as Donald Trump's running mate.  And in what looks like a bid to align himself with Trump's "'Murica!  Fuck Yeah!" platform, Gingrich has proposed recreating the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

[image courtesy of photographer Gage Skidmore and the Wikimedia Commons]

You probably know that the original such committee was founded back in the 1930s, first to keep track of (and stop) any infiltration into the United States by the Nazis, and later to do the same thing with the communists.  The committee did nab a couple of Soviet spies -- notably Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers -- but in the process blacklisted hundreds of people whose only crime was attending communist party meetings (or even being friends with someone who had).  Eventually, criticizing the government was all it took (as folk singer Pete Seeger found out).  Careers and reputations were ruined, and the gains in terms of national security were debatable at best.

Now, of course, the target is different; Gingrich wants to go after people with Islamist leanings.  "We originally created the House Un-American Activities Committee to go after Nazis," Gingrich said during an appearance on Fox and Friends this week.  "We passed several laws in 1938 and 1939 to go after Nazis and we made it illegal to help the Nazis.  We're going to presently have to go take the similar steps here... We're going to ultimately declare a war on Islamic supremacists and we're going to say, if you pledge allegiance to ISIS, you are a traitor and you have lost your citizenship.  We're going to take much tougher positions."

Which sounds like a credible position at first.  I certainly have no reason to defend people who have dedicated themselves to ISIS, or whose political and religious beliefs impel them to come over here and harm American citizens.

But the problem is, how do you find out who those people are before they act?  The FBI already monitors people who are suspected Islamists, not that such efforts are foolproof.  But Gingrich seems to be proposing further measures, taking legal action against people who have committed no crime, who have only subscribed to the wrong ideology.

Me, I find this troubling.  It's a slide toward imprisoning people for thought crimes, and one step away from abrogating the right to free speech.

And lest you think I'm overreacting, here; just two days ago, Donald Trump revoked The Washington Post's press credentials because he objected to perceived criticism by the media.  "Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign," he said in a statement, "we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post."

The Post's executive editor, Marty Baron, replied:

Donald Trump's decision to revoke The Washington Post's press credentials is nothing less than a repudiation of the role of a free and independent press.  When coverage doesn't correspond to what the candidate wants it to be, then a news organization is banished. The Post will continue to cover Donald Trump as it has all along -- honorably, honestly, accurately, energetically, and unflinchingly.  We're proud of our coverage, and we're going to keep at it.

Which is it exactly.  If free speech means anything, it must involve allowing citizens to criticize the government.

So the whole thing is moving in a decidedly scary direction.  Look, it's not that I don't appreciate how hard it must be to craft policies that will protect American citizens, insofar as it is possible, from outside threats.  I can't imagine being tasked with monitoring anyone who is suspicious, and making the right call with respect to when to move in and make arrests -- especially given the backlash either way if you're wrong.

But I do know that restricting the right to free speech, muzzling the media, and harassing Americans for perceived "un-American activities," is not the way to go.  We tried it once before, and it didn't work out so well.  The price of free speech is risk -- but it's a cost that is well worth what you gain.

A reason to keep going

This week we are seeing the final installment of the wonderful Washington Post weekly column "What Was Fake On the Internet This Week?"  It's not that the writer, Caitlin Dewey, has run out of material, that a wave of logic and skepticism has swept across the interwebz, rendering her job pointless.

Actually, it's the opposite.  After doing the column for a year and a half, Dewey is feeling defeated.

I understand her despondency, and I won't say I don't feel something of the same myself at times.  Dewey not only feels up against a rising tide of credulous idiocy, but also the inevitable money motive of the clickbait sites -- Now8News, The World News Daily Report, Before It's News, Above Top Secret, Infowars.  These all straddle the line between honest attempts to peddle a viewpoint, however crazy, and a completely pragmatic desire to devise headlines that get people to click the links and activate the advertising revenue it brings.

Dewey writes:

Frankly, this column wasn’t designed to address the current environment.  This format doesn’t make sense.  I’ve spoken to several researchers and academics about this lately, because it’s started to feel a little pointless.  Walter Quattrociocchi, the head of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science at IMT Lucca in Italy, has spent several years studying how conspiracy theories and misinformation spread online, and he confirmed some of my fears: Essentially, he explained, institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views — even when it’s demonstrably fake.

Pretty hard to argue that point.

I was talking to my son about the problem yesterday evening, and his initial response was to agree with Dewey.  What she -- and I -- are attempting to do largely amounts to what my dad used to call pissing in a rainstorm.  (Had a way with words, my dad.)  But on reconsideration, Nathan said, "Well, think of it this way.  Let's say that of the people who read your blog, 90% are already rationalists and skeptics, and are only reading it for the amusement value, or to validate their own opinions.  That's still 10% for whom the issues are still in play.  How many hits do you get a day?"

"About a thousand, give or take," I said.

"So, that's a hundred people you're reaching every day who still might be convinced.  It's like the swing states in an election.  They may be few in number, but they're the ones whose votes count the most."

Smart kid.  And as he put it, "Having a hundred swing voters a day read your posts isn't too damn bad, when you think about it."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Couple that with an email I got yesterday from a loyal reader, who had the following to say:

Merry Christmas to you and yours, Gordon.  I want to take this opportunity to tell you how much I appreciate the time you put into being a voice of reason in the whirlwind of craziness.  I can't imagine how you keep plugging away at this, but dammit, someone needs to be saying these things.  Kudos to you, and I hope Skeptophilia is around for many more years.

It's not only the personal validation of Fighting The Good Fight that keeps me going; it's knowing that there are people who are still reading, thinking, and talking, and who might in some small way be inspired to keep it up by reading what I write.  Yes, the internet is full of sensationalist trash and clickbait sites; it's an awfully good conduit for bullshit.  But it also links minds from across the world, and I can't help but feel optimistic about that.  As ZestFinance CEO Douglas Merrill put it, "All of us is smarter than any of us."

So if you're reading this, thank you, whether you've come here because you're undecided, come to have your opinions validated, or come to scoff at someone you disagree with.  If you're still reading and thinking, you're doing what you need to do.  Even if there will always be people in the world who renounce logic and reason, there is nothing to be gained by the logical and reasonable amongst us staying silent.

Public schools, boring classes, and science as a verb

A couple of days ago, the Washington Post ran an op-ed piece by David Bernstein entitled, "Why Are You Forcing My Son to Take Chemistry?"  In it, he points an accusing finger at the Maryland public school system for mandating that students take technical classes that they will, in all likelihood, never use again.  "It doesn’t take a chemist to know that my son is not going to be a chemist," Bernstein writes, in response to the objection that all students should be exposed to a variety of subjects, so they can make informed decisions on which career to pursue.  "He’s 15, not 7.  It’s really that obvious.  You took chemistry... What do you remember from that year?  Nada, I bet.  Next time a school official preens about the importance of chemistry, I’m going to ask him or her how many elements there are in the periodic table."

He goes on to rail against the system for making his son sit through a class where "It's all about memorization anyway."  "He will forget everything he 'learned' a week after the class is over," Bernstein writes.  "I can’t remember a thing, and I was a pretty good chemistry student."

He ends by pointing out (correctly) that choices like this one have opportunity costs -- by taking chemistry, the cost is that his son was deprived of the opportunity to take other classes that he would have enjoyed, and profited from, more.  More flexibility in what students study, Bernstein contends, would benefit everyone.

On one level, Bernstein is correct.  I have long been a supporter of more choice in paths for students, especially once they reach high school.  Forcing every student to sit through every general-ed class the school offers, just because "it's a graduation requirement," is wrong-headed.  Our own school system took a step away from that mentality a few years ago, and instituted a highly successful electives program -- there now are, in each subject, multiple tracks students can take to arrive at graduation, and the choices are largely driven by what topics students find intriguing.  (We do still have a great many basic survey courses that are graduation requirements, however.)

I think, though, that Bernstein misses one major point -- a question that is uncomfortable, perhaps, but it should be at the heart of any discussion of why public schools don't, by and large, turn children into competent life-long learners.  That larger question is (apropos of Bernstein's own experience) not why his son is being required to take a tedious class like chemistry, but why his son's chemistry teacher is teaching so as to make chemistry appear tedious.

After all, that's why some people go into chemistry, isn't it?  They find it fascinating.  And think about it... good heavens, chemistry is about stuff reacting.  If anything should be inherently interesting, it should be chemistry.  Why does dynamite explode?  How do chemical hand-warmers work?  Why does Drano clear clogged plumbing?  Why don't the oil and water in Italian salad dressing stay mixed?  Why does salt dissolve in water, but plastic doesn't?  All of these are questions you can only answer if you know some chemistry.

Yes, I know, you have to do some applied math to understand fully what's happening in chemical systems, and the math is what gets a lot of kids stuck.  But the math should be secondary to an understanding of the processes.  Because that's what science is -- a process, a way of knowing.  To quote the eminent astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson:  "Science is a verb."  The fact that Bernstein misses this point illustrates that it isn't just his son's generation that got shortchanged this way.  Note that to illustrate how irrelevant chemistry is to most people's lives, the question he wants to ask a school official is, "How many elements are in the periodic table?"  As if a factlet like that somehow is what scientists are concerned with, as if a collection of such trivia is what science is.

And of course, the problem isn't confined to chemistry.  My own field, biology, is often taught as if it were nothing but a long list of vocabulary words, as if somehow being able to name the parts of the cell or correctly spell "photophosphorylation" means that you understand how cells work, or how plants capture and store light energy.  Once again, there is no way around the fact that you have to know some terminology; we have to be speaking the same language so that we have some common ground upon which to discuss how living systems work.  But too many science teachers teach science as if it were some kind of static body of knowledge, as if the best scientists are the ones who remember the most abstruse words.

No field is immune to this characterization of learning as dry-as-dust memorization.  I had history teachers who taught us that history was just a list of dates, names, and treaties, not what it really is -- a complex interplay of personalities and motives, driven by circumstance, context, culture, and ambition.  It took me five years after graduation from college before I realized that history was interesting.  One of my English teachers in high school once told me, in a superior fashion, "It's low-minded to think that all literature is meant to be enjoyed."  Oh, really?  I wonder if the author would have agreed.  I doubt seriously that (s)he wrote a novel, all the while thinking, "Wow, I bet it will be really difficult for those idiot 11th graders to find the symbolism in this chapter!"

Now, I've been a high school teacher for 26 years, and I know that just as students often have little choice over what classes they have to take, teachers often have little choice over what, and in some cases how, they teach in those classes.  But we can as educators make our classes interesting, relevant, and exciting.  That much freedom we all have.  I have no qualms when I hear a student say about my class, "That was difficult," or "That lesson was a challenge to understand."  I do have serious qualms when I hear a student say, "Biology is boring."  If students, on a regular basis, find your class boring, make no mistake about it: you are failing as an educator, whatever their scores are on the standardized tests that educational policy writers are so enamored of.  Because the bottom line is, there is no subject that is inherently boring.  Taught properly, the universe, and its components and systems and interactions and history, are pretty damn fascinating, and our primary job as educators is to shine some light on a bit of it, and say, "Hey, look!  Look at this!  Isn't this cool?"