Misinformation

[WTF]

I just thought that since there's several things that we come across and read and find that are mostly untrue and promoting some sort of agenda.

 

I'll start with a personal one. The History Channel and Nat Geo (it's sister or rather mother channel) to a lesser extent. Now it might seem weird but the History channel is pretty much fear-mongering disguised as information. A lot of times the content of the shows aren't really educational or historical.

For instance comparing the biblical plagues and talking of the Anti-Christ in an absolute scaremongering manner. Prophecies and predictions.

 

They have a show about vampires. This is such a vague show. Basically they were trying to tell you that vampires existed and then went on to prove that vampires could exist based on circumstantial evidence like - some poor old lady who while fortunate enough not to get the plague had her body examined and was considered to be a vampire. I know they're pandering, but it gets ridiculous at times.

 

While my wife likes the Discovery channel/animal planet show - Monsters inside me, there's tiny bits of misinformation in the show and weird bits like do not travel outside the USA you will get something and die. Do not travel to Florida, you'll die. I mean yes there's one thing to presenting news, and there's another to basically say hey you travelled abroad and that's why you got this disease. When they're basically talking about tapeworms and other parasites that live in meats which can die if cooked at very high temperatures. I mean they should educate people on the need to eat cooked meats and to cook meats like pork at much higher temperatures to kill any parasites if they live in the animal (also probably best to suggest to cut down on the intake).

 

Pseudoscience. Linking the Mayans to polar wander and sometimes geomagnetic reversal when it's just speculation feeding into 2012 nonsense. Yes those are both real, but linking Mayans to it isn't quite right since the position of the stars is not an accurate way to map tectonic movement.

 

Well of course if they don't do this, it's about Hitler. While I understand that can get boring, they can show quality research and programming to be honest...

 

Of course there's thing about White Tigers and White Lions. The gene is recessive, so it's pretty hard to come by in nature. Just like most albinos are. As a result most zoos try to purpose breed them, which results in issues. The mother doesn't wantonly try to kill the cubs. It's doing a mercy killing in order to prevent 1)prolonged suffering. 2)spread of tainted genes. Animals of course don't work the same way as us. While we don't kill humans for being born with deficiencies we do not breed humans like we do animals. Certain zookeepers do it because it helps bring in visitors. It's quite terrible really and also it isn't easy to bring out recessive genes that strongly. I think we should appreciate the rarity.

 

A lot of time misinformation is linked with specific types of industry and research. Particularly when there's misinformation linked with pharmaceutical companies.

 

Anyways I thought it'd be a good idea to discuss all the misinformation and disinformation that we'd come across.

 

On that subject, the supermoon causing the earthquake is disinformation, however the supermoon could cause an increase in the tidal height on the 19th.

 

The disappearance of bees and it's impact on local ecosystems is not disinformation though. It's real and could cause major problems.

 

p.s. I'm not really discussing Fox News or Daily Mail since we know the amount of stuff they can make up. Oh and if anyone wondered what those weird glows were in ghost shows, it's usually reflected light. Dust picks up light which when they reflect back form a circular light pattern on a photo. Come across this often when working in dark areas.

[Strangelove]

If they didnt add that ridiculous stuff to it, no one would ever watch those channels. Everyone hates educational channels. Fact.

[deanb]

Well for Daily Mail I think my favourite quote is:

You will be familiar with the Daily Mail’s ongoing project to divide all the inanimate objects in the world into the ones that either cause or prevent cancer.

Pretty much sums them up.

http://www.badscience.net/2010/10/the-caveat-in-paragraph-number-19/

(Was linked to that article as part of something on the Daily Mail running an article on the "supermoon")

 

My fave is Wi-Fi sensitive people. The ones who are only affected by Wi-Fi sources they're told about. Whether the Wi-Fi is there or not.

 

My non-fave is the MMR + Autism stuff. Even more so with the recent stuff coming out on it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/jan/28/andrew-wakefield-mmr-vaccine

Absolutely disgusting and a massive abuse of his position.

 

I believe there's an American woman in a similar situation, there is a website counting all the death her recommendations have caused due to unvacinated kids. Anyone know what I'm trying to vaguely grasp at?

 

As for Discovery I mostly watch it for How it's Made/How Stuff Works and Mythbusters. Turns out the first 2 are on Freeview now

My main source of "educational TV" is Horizon and at the moment the Brian Cox "Wonders of the Universe". Horizon is kinda okay. Depends what they're covering, but they will sometimes do the doom and gloom thing.

[excel_excel]

My fave is Wi-Fi sensitive people. The ones who are only affected by Wi-Fi sources they're told about. Whether the Wi-Fi is there or not.

 

Ahahaha oh god. This just make me laugh so much. Think about how you could fuck with someone who was that gullible!

"is the wifi turned off?"

"...OH MY GOD ITS BEEN ON FOR THE PAST HOUR!!"

"AARRRGH!!!"

[Mr W Phallus]

You don't really appreciate how much a newspaper like the Daily Mail makes up 'facts' until you read an article which you have first-hand knowledge about. Like the article I linked the other day where the building I live in magically grew 3 floors.

 

And sure we tend to laugh at it, but when you think about the amount of people who read it, believing what they read, and the amount of influence that it has, it's actually quite worrying that they can publicly get away with lying to millions of people.

 

As for other types of misinformation, one that quite often annoys me is reading game reviews in publications that aren't specifically game-related, such as a newspaper supplement or other magazine. Now obviously you wouldn't go there for a quality, in-depth game review, but you would expect the reporter to al least check their facts. This is by no means exclusive to video-game articles, I notice it quite often in film and music articles as well but it is by far most prevalent for video-games because it is medium that tends to be taken less seriously than others. I can't remember any specific examples I'm afraid, apart from I remember seeing an article on album covers misuse the term modernist once. The scariest part of misinformation is that unless you have prior knowledge of the subject, you pretty much have to take it as fact, there's no real way of knowing what is true.

Edited March 14, 2011 by withoutphallus

[Mal]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/11/no-the-supermoon-didnt-cause-the-japanese-earthquake/

 

Somewhat pushing the misinformation back. Man, just wait till the 2012-ers start shouting. I really do not look forward to next year.

[CorgiShinobi]

Positive reviews that get their facts confused/contorted. Like, everyone is going to harp on a bad review if it's full of terrible lies, like that one for Toy Story 3 from a Chicago newspaper where the reviewer said Ham was a villan, and etc. With a positive review, it makes the review lose its credibility.

 

So, if I ever have to convince someone with another opinion rather than my own, it's also a reflection on my taste. "That reviewer said that it did this, but it didn't... you listen to this guy?!"

[MetalCaveman]

 

 

As for Discovery I mostly watch it for How it's Made/How Stuff Works and Mythbusters. Turns out the first 2 are on Freeview now

 

 

Those shows are also the only ones I watch there, also, there's a show here called "Extra Normal", basically, a bunch of dudes talking about stuff they know nothing of and trying to tie it to anything paranormal or whatever they call that stuff, the first time I watched that show I honestly thought it was supposed to be funny, and everything there was a joke or something, but apparently they are serious about it, a recent example of their stupidity: They showed this

and then one of them said "this is an energy vortex forming inside earth's atmosphere, most likely it's channeling energy to the inner earth that's described in the hollow earth theory"... Like... I'm not even kidding, that's exactly what that dude said. So, after that I went to their website to see if they had that episode online so I could share their stupidity with others, and I find that people there actually believe them. I was really surprised by that.

 

And it's the same with everything, earthquake somewhere in the world? They'll say it has something to do with the four horsemen or something like that, and the list goes on...

[WTF]

Actually when I've got insomnia I do tend to watch Discovery Science after midnight shows for a laugh. Good grief at the paranormal shows. I mean there's like 1 in 10 that's a bit odd the rest are so easily explainable.

 

Anyway while I don't really want to get political I'd like to shed some light on the situation in Bahrain. What's reported and what's not reported.

 

For starters, I spent a good few years of my childhood there so I know what the place is like and did visit it in the past decade. I still have friends there.

 

The natives of Bahrain are Sunnis and like a lot of expat oriented cultures in the Middle East, they have so many non-nationals that the natives are mostly a minority. A lot of people try to use the Sunni-Shia leverage in the protests in Bahrain. But it's not that simple. Most of the Shias in Bahrain are from Iran. Some of them have good ties with Iran too and some of them just wanted to escape Iran in the past. Many of them own businesses and are rich and successful. However the country is under autocratic rule. The present king does want to change things. He has changed it such that people who've lived there long enough can now become citizens, people can own land in the country (all of which are not really possible in most GCC countries). The current protests are quite understandable on one side when the Iranian Shia majority of populace want to gain more control over the government. However they're mostly people who've migrated there in the past 40 years and not all of them are fully integrated. And by this I mean that not all of them do consider themselves Bahraini despite getting citizenship.

 

The press has actually covered the news from the protesters viewpoint. There's the issue that these protesters aren't entirely innocent. They want political might and would not stop at anything. I'm not sure if it's been reported yet but during the attacks at the university, there have been a few deaths at the hands of the protesters as well (those of innocents). It's an extremely difficult scenario where one group is using global possible public sympathy to try and gain an upper hand in local politics. Not to mention there have been reports of unarmed police being attacked by protesters and vice versa.

 

The government isn't innocent either and them bringing Saudi in, is just going to be bad for the people living there. However both sides are at fault here. The resolution isn't quite that simple.

[Thursday Next]

I think there is a line between "misinformation" and "over simplification".

 

My English teacher once explained the difference between "Broadsheet" and "Tabloid" newspapers as "Broadsheets will present both sides of an argument and try to leave the reader to choose which one they prefer whereas Tabloids will present the side of the argument that the author believes is correct."

 

In essence, a Tabloid will simplify the matter. "I think this." a Broadsheet will not.

 

This doesn't make Tabloids "bad", they just simplify the argument.

 

Sometimes, people need a simplified argument because they don't get or don't care to get all the detail.

 

Case in point:

 

[WTF]

Actually TN while your general point of there being a thin line between misinformation and over-simplification is true, the rest of it is quite frankly not. (Not the video btw, haven't watched the clip).

 

Firstly that was very broad usage of Broadsheets and Tabloids (Having worked in Print Media a while back I can assure you that more newspapers opt for Berliners and Compacts these days with a few exceptions like Telegraph) .

 

Now to the actual point, the mainstream non-tabloid press does have a slant, it depends on the owners. In a tabloid the slant is obvious it's more to do with the style of reporting. A non-tabloid newspaper will present both sides of the argument obviously favouring the side that the newspaper or in some cases the author believes in. It will be heavily invested in one side. Easily noticeable during the time of elections. If it's truly neutral on a subject, it usually relies on the author but then it's the author's sway that holds more tide. However the newspaper will bring to light the positives of the side that it feels is correct. A tabloid on the other hand will use sensationalism capitalising on fear and instead of giving a viewpoint drives home the fear. For instance there have been a number of articles written in the Guardian by a man who does spread some misinformation about climate change, while there are of course articles in the DM that probably say climate change is a lie and of course add on that they stole your money to invest in it.

 

It is incorrect to say that a mainstream newspaper and a tabloid are different in that they simplify an opinion. It is one of the functions of the news-media to shape public opinion. In fact I'm sure most civics texts agree with me in that news-media is one of the tools to shape public opinion. While a tabloid acts stupid in its presentation, a mainstream paper can be disingenuous and mask its true intentions.

 

At the end of the day, in today's world we have access to several sources of information and can correct ourselves if we are wrong. To get the big picture we cannot rely on one source of information, no matter how credible or neutral they sound. Also these media have an audience and the intelligence of the readers is directly proportional to the quality of the writing.

 

In short, newspapers are a tool to shape your opinion, but it is upto you to prevent yourself from getting carried away by what they write and investigate

[Thursday Next]

Actually TN while your general point of there being a thin line between misinformation and over-simplification is true, the rest of it is quite frankly not. (Not the video btw, haven't watched the clip).

...snip!

 

Somewhat ironically, I'm admittedly guilty of oversimplifying the broadsheet/tabloid thing.

 

You should watch as much Brian Cox as possible. He's the most accessible physicist evahhhh!

[deanb]

I'd say for Brian Cox..things can only get better.

He's the British Michio Kaku, pretty good. I've got last nights Wonders to watch.

for frag: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zm833/Wonders_of_the_Universe_Stardust/

[Mal]

OoT but... there's more Wonders to watch!? -glee-

[WTF]

for frag: http://www.bbc.co.uk...verse_Stardust/

 

I know of him and actually while I agree with some of his views, I dislike him as a person. It's just me. One of my more favourite mad scientists was Magnus Pyke. The guy was pretty good though it's a shame that a robbery was what left him weak and eventually killed him off 2 years later. People might remember him as the guy who yelled Science! in the Thomas Dolby video Blinded me with Science.

Fun Fact: Thomas Dolby also invented the RMF file format and patented the synthesizers that created the first ringtones. I believe he still gets money from those early patents/creations of his. Even more fun fact, despite being smart he is also a member of the Flat Earth Society (yes it is what you think) which is quite confusing.

Fun Fact 2: Ben Miller almost became a quantum physicist though he still possesses degrees in SSD.

 

Anyways I'm not much of a fan of Cox, not because of what he knows but rather his methodology. He is a pop scientist after all. Personally I like some of Chomsky's works. I think I have a preference for a different kind of rationalist though that's a little odd coming from someone who finds Slavoj Zizek highly entertaining and interesting. I also think Venter's not bad. But it is a personal preference. I'm not saying Cox is wrong in what he says for the most part, but I tend to not watch shows of people I dislike though I do read them (as then I can remove the irritant visuals and just focus on the content). Maybe it started from enjoying reading Feynman.

[toxicitizen]

I'd say for Brian Cox..things can only get better.

He's the British Michio Kaku, pretty good. I've got last nights Wonders to watch.

for frag: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zm833/Wonders_of_the_Universe_Stardust/

Oh, damn! Wonders of the Universe started airing?!

 

I watched Wonders of the Solar System last summer with a friend and we absolutely loved it! Gonna have to torrent it!

 

Brian Cox is such a cool guy. He really seems like the kind who would go "You know what? Let's have class outside today!" every single week.

[WTF]

You know when you think about it, the greatest amount of misinformation is on Climate Change. Mostly because people people assume that global warming increases heat and associate climatic change with global warming alone. I will say this though, carbon footprint is a terrible way to actually measure it and attempt to control it.

 

The truth is by our actions we have accelerated what should have been a natural process. However we are due a lot of things an ice age, geomagnetic shift, total polar wander, contintental drift, massive solar electromagnetic flares and so on. It's just right now we're sort of failing when we combine all these factors and try to explain everything based on these few factors. One thing is definite though, we cannot control climate change by changing our carbon footprint. We can only attempt to slow it down, which is what we're trying. The wheels are already strongly in motion. It's like trying to cure oneself of cancer but with 18th century medical knowledge. Not saying we shouldn't do anything but our current attempts are trial and error. People should accept that. At least I hope they will in the future.

[deanb]

Yeah I'm in the camp "this will happen, Ice Ages come many times we're due one soon, just maybe not this soon" camp. In fact regarding Ice Ages iirc we're actually still in one. Though I think it was more of a retarded definition that meant that was the case due to the caps being coated in snow still.

 

I still think, regardless of the overall impact on the more gigantic natural forces in action, that attempting to reduce our environmental impact and reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and toxic resources is a noble and worthy cause. Of course it is something only the more developed nations can really partake in since the mid-way point nations kinda at the stage where they still heavily rely on stuff like that.

[TheMightyEthan]

Anything that attempts to explain scientific concepts to a general audience is going to have to walk the line between simplification and misinformation. It's simply impossible to explain scientific ideas to a lay person in a way that makes sense without glossing over major portions of the explanation. Basically your options are to explain it inaccurately but in a way that makes sense, or to only explain it to people who have degrees in the field.

[WTF]

Anything that attempts to explain scientific concepts to a general audience is going to have to walk the line between simplification and misinformation. It's simply impossible to explain scientific ideas to a lay person in a way that makes sense without glossing over major portions of the explanation. Basically your options are to explain it inaccurately but in a way that makes sense, or to only explain it to people who have degrees in the field.

 

I disagree. Or rather I'd like to make a correction. it's impossible to explain scientific concepts to a general audience who are unwilling to learn. There are those who would like to learn and are part of the general audience, they know a few things. They'd understand what a black hole is but not a space-time singularity. You can teach a willing audience. It might take time but yes they'd be willing to accept concepts even if it seems a little difficult, if you teach them slowly. An unwilling audience on the other hand needs a lot of simplification. While I know what I said is mostly true I'm also speaking from personal experience of doing some really odd community service as part of my degree.

[deanb]

I think you can simplify without having to jump into misinformation.

If people don't want to know, then you're fucked from the get go.

But if folks want to learn then give them the benefit of the doubt and head in somewhere that's not condescending then build up. If they don't understand then you back down a bit.

If you're trying to explain something really complex then you don't want to dumb it down too much or you become totally removed from the original thing you're trying to get across.

[WTF]

I agree with you Dean, though I get the feeling that what the others are arguing is that certain people use bad analogies and thus while trying to educate misinform a person.

So essentially the newly taught become oddly enough a source of disinformation rather than simplify things or misinform. Disinformation is worse than misinformation though.

[deanb]

Ah crap, I thought I'd put in a bit specifically mentioning not to use analogies, then went on to my part of instead just using basics.

 

Analogies are a minefield as the person you're explaining to may have different ideas on the thing you're making your comparison to that warps the idea you're trying to get across.

[WTF]

I actually had this long thought process going in my head on my way to the 'domestic office'.

A lot of misinformation comes from lack of the right guiding figures and in some cases the unwillingness to change or learn or in some cases adapt. On the subject of change, there's a tribe on one of the Andaman and Nicobar islands which belong to India that does refuse outside contact. They pretty much go around naked and I do believe that when people gave pants to them they ended up wearing them on their heads. There's also another island of cannibals. It's a very simple experiment that shows the unwillingness of a lot of people to change. I know that the Indian Govt has had programs to integrate certain tribes into society, giving them better chances to be educated and employed (they have reservations for the several tribes present on a schedule). The success-rate varies. Certain countries in Africa have programs like that but due to the general instability of most of the continent success-rates are lower.

 

I think misinformation stems sometimes from the educator's lack of awareness and the fact that some educators do believe they know all. It's an issue of course when you assume you know all. It's no coincidence that a lot of racist and bigoted remarks come from people who aren't exposed to the world and limited in their world-view due to various factors. The first thing we should always do is reject world history taught in a country. It's always a little skewed and biased into making you believe your country is good. I know that the British education system glosses over the fact that the treatment they meted to the colonies was sometimes downright brutal. We even celebrate the lives of some of these thieves and crooks today. As they say one nation's hero is another's villain. There are lots of massacres too attributed to these people unfortunately. Of course it isn't the fault of the people but rather the fault of the ruling class of society and high-ranking merchants.

 

Every country in the world has done good and bad and I think the modern world needs to place greater importance on teaching some of these to today's youth without a slant so that history doesn't repeat itself.

 

However a lot of things will repeat themselves like trends,discoveries and the like. And of course the perennial debate - is X art?

 

There's a lack of good educators around these days. I still get called by Teach to take up a teaching post since I registered interest some 8 years ago. It indicates that there is a lack of fine educators even here. Not to mention I've come across a divide between parents and teachers in some areas. Certain teachers using strange methods to isolate the parent and student and of course ridiculous arguments connecting being grounded to criminal confinement. There's so much misinformation and disinformation around us that it's staggering. Part of the reason is actually allowing people who have no clue on a subject to voice their opinion. Yes some opinions are valid, but we must really reduce the clutter. I'm glad that most of us here are smart individuals, but that's not a universal case. Youtube, comments in the places like the Daily Mail are all pretty much indicators of how low an opinion can go. It's like 1.8 billion (approx) people shouting at once. Those who don't have access to the internet can now hear about it in the news thanks to the 'hey you ordinary person tweet me your thoughts' attitude of the news-media. Of course with a few exceptions, the ones that are shown are the ones that can provoke a reaction.

 

I'm sorry for the lack of a coherent structure.

[WTF]

You know I wish I had a few minutes this week to sit down and post this but I've been wanting to post some common misconceptions about 3D and this point comes up because of the 3DS and all the misconceptions people have because of it being glasses free.

Firstly it is quite difficult to have a huge screen to go glasses free 3D, the larger the monitor the more difficult it is to get an ideal focal plane, it's this reason why even the 3DS has a sweet spot. In an explanatory analogy sense it is similar to blowing up and or miniaturizing images i.e. when an image is smaller it is more difficult to notice the imperfections (despite the resolution if it's digital), it'll look better than most blown up images in terms of quality.

Now to get to the real side of things, when you view a 3D image as displayed on a screen, it's because the two images are created to meet at a focal point behind the screen. Now when the screen is tiny the angle of view is quite beneficial to viewing such an image without the aid of glasses. However the larger it gets, the more difficult it becomes. Currently it doesn't really work well beyond a 20in screen. At standard TV sizes of 40-50in, it's pretty much a pipe dream.

Also Nintendo isn't the innovator here, it's Toshiba (credit should go where it belongs really) and they've not really had success with their TV models because of the size. There are people trying to get larger monitors and honestly it's not really working. The best way to incorporate 3D is pretty much what Sony has - which is pretty much a glorified head-mounted display. 3D works well on that because it gives a different sensory perception when you have your ears fed to the sound and no other objects blocking your peripheral view.

Another stupid thing that people say is that the 3D we have now is the same as the 3D that's always been there. Wrong. It is similar but it's not the same and works more efficiently. It's like saying a BMP is a TIFF image when you make such assumption. I know that to a non-technical person, it might not matter but it is important to understand the difference if you're willing to criticise it.

3D in films isn't bad, but the problem is currently 3D in films is a spectacle which to the modern audience isn't that big. However in gaming the spectacle is the thing - considering that truth be told graphics and visuals are far more important for most people in and out of the industry. 3D in films needs to form an emotional connection which it can. They did do it slightly in a few scenes in Toy Story 3 and I know that we can use 3D to show some emotional depth, but people aren't using semiotics right which is the issue.

 

Now as for 3D in truth, I'm not the biggest fan, but I see it as necessary to make the next big step which we should achieve within the next 20-30 years. 3D is a necessary footstep in our attempt at holovision. 3D development actually led to pretty decent advances in the Head Mounted displays already. Now for holovision, what we need is to have 3D projected light which is actually a consequence of attempting glasses free 3D in a larger scale. I think people should get off their high horse and realise that aspect. I agree it is expensive but it'll get cheaper and it will have some market proliferation, just like Blu-Rays do.