The Fake News Issue

I enjoy a good coffee, a bit of light astrophysics chat with Neil de Grasse Tyson, and spring with its blossoms and daffodils.

It occurred to me, some things really do go together, like breakfast and coffee, Neil de Grasse Tyson and ties with planets on them, (thank you sir for coming to Christchurch and sharing the cosmic perspective), and Spring and daffodils. However, other things really do not.

Take “fake” and “news”. Fake news is such a thing right now it has made the news, with new articles and discussions popping up all the time. It is so easy for anyone to make a professional looking website to push their crazy ideas, and the human mind seems to be attracted to the certain type of story these people make up.

To a skeptic armed with the list of logical fallacies, or a scientist armed with the scientific method, we can begin to pick out the truth, but for the general public it is so easy to be duped. What of the huge list of psychological tricks that marketing folk are trained in, and how about those Machiavellian PR strategies? Snap out of it. We do not live in an episode of House of Cards, and conspiracy theories training and above average intelligence are not needed to create fake news. Just ask Donald Trump.

First we have to ask, why do people tell lies? One answer may be - just for the attention. Thanks to Michael Wright, who wrote an excellent opinion piece in Stuff.co.nz 25th September 2017, on a campaign technique about telling lies to distract from hard questions. Basically, if you are going to tell a lie, make it big, and boom, you are “throwing a dead cat on the table”. Try unthinking about that for a minute.

Dead cats aside, my point is, there may be more rubbish in the news than ever, but keep your mind sharp and read thoughtfully. Talk to your friends about the issues and remember that convincing your aunt about the dangers of alternative medicine is important. Real harm can come to you and your loved ones if medical advice is ignored. Huge decisions about our society, health and the environment that affect us long into the future can be influenced by lies.

Getting the skeptic message through may be getting harder every day, especially when the media do not always like to close down conversations with quacks, but instead give them air-time to “balance” the conversation because they know if stirs up their audience, but we need to keep pushing.

Separate the fake from the news.

Remain skeptical.