The problem with research

If there's one phrase that torques the absolute hell out of me -- and just about every actual scientist out there -- it's, "Well, I did my research."

Oh, you did, did you?  What lab did you do your research in?  Or was it field work?  Let's see your data!  Which peer-reviewed journal published your research?  How many times has it been cited in other scientific journals?

Part of the problem, of course, is like a lot of words in the English language -- "theory" and "proof" are two examples that come to mind -- the word "research" is used one way by actual researchers and a different way by most other people.  We were taught the alternate definition of "research" in grade school, with being assigned "research papers," which meant "go out and look up stuff other people have found out on the topic, and summarize that in your own words."  There's a value to doing this; it's a good starting place to understanding a subject, and is honestly where we all began with scholarship.

The problem is -- and it exists even at the grade-school level of inquiry -- this kind of "research" is only as good as the sources you choose.  When I was a teacher, one of the hardest things to get students to understand was that all sources are not created equal.  A paper in Science, or even the layperson's version of it in Scientific American or Discover, is head-and-shoulders above the meanderings of Some Random Guy in his blog.  (And yes, I'm well aware that this pronouncement is being made by Some Random Guy in his blog.)

That doesn't mean those less-reputable sources are necessarily wrong, of course.  It's more that they can't be relied upon.  While papers in Science (and other comparable journals) are occasionally retracted for errors or inaccuracies, there is a vetting process that makes their likelihood of being correct vastly higher.  After all, any oddball with a computer can create a website, and post whatever they want on it, be it brilliant posts about cutting-edge science or the looniest of wingnuttery.

The confusion between the two definitions of the word research has the effect of increasing people's confidence in the kind we were all doing in middle school, and giving that low-level snooping about an undeserved gloss of reputability.  This was the upshot of a paper in Nature (peer-reviewed science, that), by Kevin Aslett of the University of Central Florida et al., entitled, "Online Searches to Evaluate Misinformation Can Increase Its Perceived Veracity."  Their results are kind of terrifying, if not unexpected given the "post-truth society" we've somehow slid into.  The authors write:

Although conventional wisdom suggests that searching online when evaluating misinformation would reduce belief in it... across five experiments, we present consistent evidence that online search to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing them...  We find that the search effect is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information.  Our results indicate that those who search online to evaluate misinformation risk falling into data voids, or informational spaces in which there is corroborating evidence from low-quality sources. 

The tendency appears to be that when someone is "doing their research" on a controversial subject, what they do is an online search, pursued until they find two or three hits on sources that corroborate what they already believed, and that strengthens their conviction that they were right in the first place.  The study found that very little attention was usually given to the quality of those sources, or where those sources got the information themselves.  If it makes the "researcher" nod sagely and say, "Yeah, that's what I thought," it doesn't matter if the information came from NASA -- or from QAnon.

The problem is, a lot of those bogus sources can look convincing. 

Other times, of course, all you have to be able to do is add two-digit numbers to realize that they're full of shit.

People see data in some online source, and rarely consider (1) who collected the data and why, (2) how it was analyzed, (3) what information wasn't included in the analysis, and (4) whether it was verified, and if so how and by whom.  I first ran into the old joke about "73.4% of all statistics are made up on the spot" years ago, and it's still funny, even if our laughs are rather wry these days.  Sites like Natural News, Food Babe, Before It's News, Breitbart.com, Mercola.com, InfoWars, One America News, and even a few with scholarly-sounding names -- like The Society for Scientific Exploration, Evolution News, and The American College of Pediatricians are three examples -- are clearinghouses for fringe-y and discredited ideas, often backed up by data that's either cherry-picked and misrepresented, or from sources even further down the ladder of sketchy credibility.

Given how much bullshit is out there,  a lot of it well-hidden behind facts, figures, and fancy writing, it can be a challenge for laypeople (and I very much count myself amongst their numbers) to discern truth from fiction.  It's also an uphill struggle to fight against the very natural human tendency of confirmation bias; we all would love it if our cherished notions of how the world works were one hundred percent correct.  But if we want to make smart decisions, we all need to stop saying "I did my research" when all that "research" involved was a twenty-minute Google search to find the website of some random crank who confirmed what we already believed.

Remember, as the brilliant journalist Kathryn Schulz points out, that one of the most mind-expanding and liberating things we can say is, "I don't know.  Maybe I'm wrong."  And to start from that open-minded perspective and find out what the facts really are -- from the actual researchers.

****************************************

Truth, lies, and Facebook

There's been a whole lot of buzz lately on the subject of free speech and social media.

The maelstrom has centered around the controversial figure of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, whose rather lax policies about truth in political advertisements is said by many to have contributed to Donald Trump's nomination and eventual electoral win.  As we enter another presidential election season (lord help us all), the whole issue has come up again -- with Zuckerberg defending his position on allowing ads even if they contain factual inaccuracy.

I.e., "Fake News."  Oh, how I've come to loathe that phrase, which gets lobbed every time someone hears a piece of news unfavorable to their preferred politician.  Call it "Fake News," and you can forthwith stop thinking about it.

It's been a remarkably efficient strategy -- and is largely to blame for the current political mess we're in.

In any case, Zuckerberg isn't backing down.  He said:

While I certainly worry about the erosion of truth, I don’t think most people want to live in a world where you can only post things that tech companies judge to be 100% true...  We’re seeing people across the spectrum try to define more speech as dangerous because it may lead to political outcomes they see as unacceptable.  Some hold the view that since the stakes are now so high, they can no longer trust their fellow citizens with the power to communicate and decide what to believe for themselves.  I personally believe that this is more dangerous for democracy over the long term than almost any speech.

Which, to me, misses the point entirely.

Free speech covers opinions like, "I think Donald Trump has been a great president."  I have no right to censor that, whether or not I agree with it.  However, saying "Donald Trump eats live babies for breakfast" is not covered under free speech, because it's a false statement intended to discredit.

Which the law refers to as "libel."

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Ibrahim.ID, Socialmedia-pm, CC BY-SA 4.0]

So allowing political ads is one thing.  You can craft a political ad that steers clear of libel even if it's highly critical of the candidate you're running against.   But when you post factual inaccuracies (better known as "lies") about someone, with the intent to cause harm to their reputation or electability, that's no longer a matter of free speech.

And as such, yes, Mark, you have an obligation to block such advertisements.

Elizabeth Warren responded to Zuckerberg's stance by putting together an ad claiming that Zuckerberg is a Trump supporter (which he claims is untrue).  But the salvo evidently didn't really strike the target.  Zuckerberg is still unapologetic for his position:

Do we ban ads about health care or immigration or women’s empowerment?  And if you’re not going to ban those, does it really make sense to give everyone a voice in the political debates except for the candidates themselves?  I believe when it’s not absolutely clear what to do, we should err on the side of greater expression.

Well, actually, you have banned ads about health care.  Earlier this year, Facebook (rightly) decided to block ads promoting the talking points of the anti-vaxxers.  Why?  Because what they were saying was false and harmful.  That's the acid test, you know?  (1) Is it false? and (2) is it harmful or damaging to the person or persons targeted?

If the answer to those two questions is "yes," then social media has an obligation to say no to the advertisement.

Hard to see how anything about "women's empowerment" would fall under those guidelines.

So what Zuckerberg is engaging in is a false equivalency -- and I believe he's perfectly well aware of it.  Those ads bring in millions of dollars of revenue, so he has a vested interest in turning a blind eye, regardless of the political or societal outcome.  As usual, it's all about the bottom line.

At present, I still have a Facebook.  For one thing, it's my primary way of keeping in touch with people who live far away and whom I rarely see.  For another, it's the main social media platform used by my publishing company, so I'd be cutting myself off from them pretty thoroughly if I deleted my profile.

So I'm sticking -- for the time being.  I'd love to see enough pressure put on Zuckerberg that he changes his stance, and at least pledges to stop advertisements that engage in spreading demonstrably false statements.  That's all we're asking, really -- not to take sides, but to stop all sides from lying for their own gain.

It's not a difficult concept.  And hard to see how you'd craft an argument that increasing the amount of truth in all kinds of media is a bad thing.

*****************************

This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is from an author who has been a polarizing figure for quite some time; the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.  Dawkins has long been an unapologetic critic of religion, and in fact some years ago wrote a book called The God Delusion that caused thermonuclear-level rage amongst the Religious Right.

But the fact remains that he is a passionate, lucid, and articulate exponent of the theory of evolution, independent of any of his other views.  This week's book recommendation is his wonderful The Greatest Show on Earth, which lays out the evidence for biological evolution in a methodical fashion, in terminology accessible to a layperson, in such a way that I can't conceive how you'd argue against it.  Wherever you fall on the spectrum of attitudes toward evolution (and whatever else you might think of Dawkins), you should read this book.  It's brilliant -- and there's something eye-opening on every page.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

An obituary for facts

Of all of the things to be appalled about over the last few days -- and there is a wide selection to choose from, something for everyone -- nothing chilled me like the announcement by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer that the crowds attending Donald Trump's inauguration set a record.

"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period," Spicer said.  "That's what you guys should be writing and covering."

Which, of course, is blatantly and demonstrably false.

Then, when Trump spokesperson Kellyanne Conway was asked about Spicer's claim on NBC's Meet the Press, she said that it wasn't a lie -- that Spicer had simply given the public "alternative facts."

On the face of it, this may seem like a small matter -- the people who are in charge of presenting Donald Trump's public face to the media stretching the truth to assuage the new president's ego.  But think about it.  What Spicer and Conway are saying is, "Facts don't matter.  Accurate reporting doesn't matter.  All that matters is believing what you're told."

And even more terrifying is that Trump's followers, by and large, did believe what Spicer and Conway said.  "I don't believe one damned thing that comes from the crooked, bought-and-sold mainstream media," one person posted on Facebook.

"The liberal press will do anything to disparage our president," said another.  "No lie is too big or too small as long as it casts him in a hateful light."

This last one is the same person who posted the following photograph:

And I've already seen the following three times, with a caption of "Finally allowed back in the White House:"

We're being consistently steered away from respecting facts and evidence toward ideology, belief, confirmation bias, and a cult of personality -- an approach far more consistent with North Korea than with the United States, where Dear Leader is the center of near-worship on the basis of everything from his flawless statesmanship to his golf game.

But that's the direction we're heading.  Unsurprising, then, that governmental positions are being filled with people who have the same attitude-- predominantly climate change deniers (Tom Price, Rex Tillerson, and Scott Pruitt) and young-Earth creationists (Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, and Vice-President Mike Pence himself).  None of these views are based on logic, rationality, or fact; they're either blind, doctrinaire belief in the face of evidence, or confirmation bias to accept a claim because it's politically or economically expedient.

What blows my mind is how far this ignore-the-facts approach can take you.  If you believe that the crowds at Trump's inauguration were yuuuge, then that's what they were, photographs (or any other evidence) be damned.  If you think the Earth is 6,000 years old, none of the mountains of evidence showing this to be untrue will convince you -- but you will swallow that Beowulf was an "eyewitness account of dinosaurs showing that they coexisted with humans," as was just claimed this week by Answers in Genesis spokesperson and "scientist" Andrew Snelling.

And once you believe that facts and evidence don't matter, it's apparently a small step to believing that a thin-skinned, narcissistic egomaniac who is a serial adulterer and (by his own admission) guilty of sexual assault could be the anointed one of god.

As George Orwell put it in 1984, "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.  It was their final, most essential command."

We've got a rough road ahead.  I'm cheered by the numbers of people who turned out for the Women's Marches Against Trump -- literally millions of people came out for what were almost entirely peaceful demonstrations against what this administration stands for.  But we've got our work cut out for us.  We have elected and appointed officials, and (apparently) a significant slice of the voting public, who have written the obituary for a fact-based understanding of the world, in favor of "alternative facts" that fit the way they wish things were.  And I'm at a loss for how to approach this.  Because once you've decided that anything other than evidence is the best guide to determining the truth, I have no idea how you could be convinced that you were wrong about any belief you might hold.

Heaven knows I'm not infallible myself, but I do have one thing going for me; if you think I'm wrong, show me the evidence.  I might not like it, but faced with the facts, I'll have no recourse but to say, "Huh.  I guess I was wrong, then."  But if the media lies 100% of the time (except when they say something you happen to have already believed), when your favorite political figure has no flaws and was elevated to the position by god himself, when the hard evidence itself is suspect -- you have erected an impenetrable wall around yourself, locking yourself in with nothing but your ideology for company.

And a nation full of people like that might be the most dangerous thing in the world.

Moving past the facts

Because we all need something more to be pessimistic about regarding the incoming administration's choices for leadership roles, we have: a nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services of an anti-LGBT ideologue who sided with BP when the Deepwater Horizon well blew out, fouling the Gulf of Mexico with 210 million gallons of crude oil.  He referred to the White House's drive to secure funds to recompense businesses and homeowners whose property was damaged by the spill a "Chicago-style political shakedown."  Worse still, considering the job he's been nominated for, he belongs to a group that is not only virulently anti-vaxx, but believes that President Obama used hypnosis and mind-control techniques to win the 2008 and 2012 elections.

It's hard to imagine a worse choice for HHS than Tom Price.  (Yes, I know, I've been saying that sort of thing a lot lately.  Each time I think, "Okay, that's the worst choice I've heard yet," the bar keeps getting raised.)  Dana Liebelson of Huffington Post writes:

Over the years, Price co-sponsored a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.  He voted against a bill that banned employers from discriminating against gay people and a bill that fought anti-gay hate crimes.  He called the Obama administration’s guidelines allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, “absurd.” 

Price went out of his way to back Kelvin Cochran, an Atlanta fire chief who was terminated in January 2015 after employees received copies of his self-published book, which equated homosexuality with pedophilia and bestiality.  The city’s mayor claimed Cochran was fired for his “judgment and management.”  But Price, along with five other Georgia lawmakers, signed onto a letter asking the mayor to reinstate him.

Price belongs to the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, which sounds pretty innocuous, but is a fringe group whose beliefs border on lunacy.  Over at Mother Jones, Stephanie Mencimer writes:

Yet despite the lab coats and the official-sounding name, the docs of the AAPS are hardly part of mainstream medical society.  Think Glenn Beck with an MD.  The group (which did not return calls for comment for this story) has been around since 1943.  Some of its former leaders were John Birchers, and its political philosophy comes straight out of Ayn Rand.  Its general counsel is Andrew Schlafly, son of the legendary conservative activist Phyllis.  The AAPS statement of principles declares that it is “evil” and “immoral” for physicians to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, and its journal is a repository for quackery.  Its website features claims that tobacco taxes harm public health and electronic medical records are a form of “data control” like that employed by the East German secret police.  An article on the AAPS website speculated that Barack Obama may have won the presidency by hypnotizing voters, especially cohorts known to be susceptible to “neurolinguistic programming”—that is, according to the writer, young people, educated people, and possibly Jews.

Of course, I suppose this is the kind of thing you get when you have a President-elect whose spokespeople think -- and this is close to a direct quote -- "there's no such thing as facts."  Trump spokesperson Scottie Nell Hughes, who appeared three days ago on the Diane Rehm Show, made the following astonishing statement when asked about the President-elect's penchant for making statements that are outright lies (and I'm including her entire statement, so you can see that I didn't take it out of context):

Well, I think it’s also an idea of an opinion.  And that’s — on one hand I hear half the media saying that these are lies, but on the other half there are many people that go, no, it’s true.  And so one thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch is that people that say facts are facts, they’re not really facts. 

There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts.  And so Mr. Trump’s tweet amongst a certain crowd, a large — a large part of the population, are truth.  When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some — in his — amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up.  Those that do not like Mr. Trump, they say that those are lies, and there’s no facts to back it up.

No.  No, no, no.  For fuck's sake, there are facts, and they matter.  When Trump claims that there were "millions of illegal votes" that cost him the popular vote, it is simply untrue.  So are his statements that there was "serious voter fraud" in Virginia, California, and New Hampshire -- coincidentally, all states where he lost.  So was his claim that President Obama "screamed at a protester" at a Clinton rally.  So was his claim that "14% of resident non-citizens are registered to vote."  So was his statement that under Hillary Clinton, the State Department had six billion dollars "lost or stolen."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

These are not ideas or opinions.  These are statements that are demonstrably false, and that since he continues to defend them even after they were debunked, are actual outright lies.  Despite what Ms. Hughes claims, there is no such thing as a statement that is truth for "a large part of the population" and false for the rest of us.

The problem is, once you start to doubt the facts -- hell, to doubt that facts exist -- you can be convinced of literally anything.  You are set up to fall for any sufficiently convincing demagogue who makes statements that "seem reasonable," by which I mean "conform to your preconceived notions."  You are set up to buy that vaccines don't work, that LGBT individuals are more likely to be pedophiles, that Obama hypnotized people into voting for him, and that the people who live along the Gulf Coast deserve to pay for the damage of an oil spill from a multi-million dollar petroleum corporation out of their own pockets.

You are also, apparently, set up to believe that a candidate whose platform was "Drain the Swamp" is still living up to his word when every single leadership appointee he picks is either a donor or an establishment insider -- for example, the wife of a prominent conservative senator (Secretary of Transportation), a hedge fund manager for Goldman-Sachs (Secretary of the Treasury), a billionaire investor nicknamed "the king of bankruptcy" (Secretary of Commerce), a long-time senator with distinct racist leanings (Attorney General), and a pro-privatization multi-millionaire with zero experience (Secretary of Education).

The whole thing is profoundly terrifying, mostly because it's so hard to combat.  Once you've adopted this viewpoint -- that facts don't matter, or that facts are what you say they are -- you're stuck, and no amount of evidence will persuade you.  And after that, scary things can happen.  As Voltaire put it: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."