SnooPuppers1978 t1_javnhk1 wrote
While I would intuitively agree with the results, I still wonder how it could be possible to do a study like this in an unbiased manner?
fractiousrhubarb t1_javzcbo wrote
Probably test the statements against actual reality?
SnooPuppers1978 t1_jawy76z wrote
You have to consider sarcasm, context, multiple interpretations, metaphoric meanings and in the end you would interpret any statement depending on your bias even before testing it against the "actual reality" of which rarely is black and white and easy to determine or validate.
mindfu t1_jaz4vi3 wrote
It's not that difficult if the misinformation is blatant. For example, anything implying vaccines don't work, or Fauci tried engineering covid with Bill Gates, and so forth.
SnooPuppers1978 t1_jb0215s wrote
> For example, anything implying vaccines don't work
Even this statement can be understood in multitude of different ways. What does "not work" even mean? Did the vaccines work in creating herd immunity? No. Did vaccines work in terms of reducing deaths and hospitalisations? Yes.
> Fauci tried engineering covid with Bill Gates
Can also be interpreted/understood in multitude of different ways.
So interpreter can choose to interpret those in any biased way to that interpreter. For example they can choose on the first statement to mean, that this statement implies that vaccine have had absolutely no positive effect at all which makes the statement false, while bias in other direction could interpret it that vaccines didn't do what was initially publicly advertised or promised which makes the statement true for them if they consider public advertising claiming that you wouldn't get infected.
Like you could go into this thought pattern of, "these crazies certainly mean that not work means that vaccines don't have absolutely any positive effect, non biased person can see that, so surely that's the correct way to interpret it. This statement makes them not get the vaccine so I'm definitely in the right in determining this statement to be misinformation", but it doesn't seem wholly scientific to me. Fact is pandemic still proceeded even after vaccine rollout, so in some sense they did work, but did they work enough? Does saying "not work" mean "not work to end the pandemic or not work at all"?
And you are saying "implying not work", which would be even more unclear, than a clear statement of saying "they don't work". Implying not to work, could be someone just claiming they got infected even though they took the vaccine and being frustrated about it.
If you determine that any message that would get people to vaccinate, is "true information" and anything that might make them avoid getting to do that is "misinformation", it might be more obvious. But is that what you are looking for? Because certainly you can say truths either way and definitely lie in any direction.
On the "not work" topic, you take this fact check as an example:
https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-gates-idUSL1N2S7292
So you can see that all sides are cherry picking/biased here.
Reuters title said that the original statement is "Fact Check-Bill Gates did not say COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective"
- Where did anyone claim "Bill Gates said COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective". Maybe somewhere someone did, but in the examples, I'm seeing "not working well" which is clearly a subjective statement.
- Next ineffective in terms of what? Ineffective in terms of blocking transmission? Bill Gates did strongly imply that.
- etc, etc, etc. So all sides have at least some amount of bias here, either in how they interpret the claims, how they fill in the blanks, etc.
mindfu t1_jb10ad9 wrote
>Even this statement can be understood in multitude of different ways.
It's true that you can find ways to misunderstand it if you're looking to. That's separate from these kinds of statements having more than enough common understanding for this sort of social study.
If you were requiring this same level of resistance to alternate interpretation for all other well-known and generally agreed-upon terms in politics, pretty much no social study would be possible.
I think we've both laid our positions out pretty well, and know where each other stand. It doesn't seem like we're going to change each other's mind soon, so cheers and best.
SnooPuppers1978 t1_jb1vsy3 wrote
I do see issues with most social studies to be fair, and it often would feel like there must have been baked in bias affecting those.
Even with more concrete sciences there is a lot of possibility for cherry picking, and many other flaws stemming from biases. You could keep pre emptively checking for potential datasets that might be most likely to agree with your bias.
But again I personally, intuitively, based on what I have seen, would also guess that right side does a lot more misinformation, but then there is also a question of how much more and how much of that is coming due to bias from the study authors.
Because there is a certain point of interpretation where you draw the line and this could affect the results a lot. Where is the line drawn for any topics from either side to give benefit of the doubt.
And politics being such a subject worst in terms of biases.
I would like to see concrete random sample of how they classified the content, that would be interesting, but seems behind a paywall.
[deleted] t1_jazkc3m wrote
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Larry_Linguini t1_jaw9udk wrote
https://i.imgur.com/GTubHzH.png When you have stuff like this from your political fact checkers I doubt anything can be unbiased.
AutomaticOrange4417 t1_jayr406 wrote
Those two statements are in contradiction. It looks like a typo. It says that Russian oil imports were up only 28%. I think the second bullet is meant to say that the US doubled it's oil imports in total, not just from Russia.
Also what website is that from? There's no source information, just a cropped screenshot. That's pretty bad evidence for a science subreddit
Larry_Linguini t1_jaytc8b wrote
It's from politifact, they state again that it doubled later in the article.. it's clearly nonsense. Their main argument is that we don't rely so heavily on Russian oil in general, why they made the title what it is I can only assume is done as a "gotcha". This shouldn't be the norm for a fact checking website but politifact and snopes has done this type of thing plenty of times.
fforw t1_jazw9kr wrote
And even worse, gotchas like this "balance" the score.
Inaccuracy here: One Misinformation
"Jewish Space Lasers": One Misinformation
timoshitskiy t1_jb1kx04 wrote
Trust me nothing that you see online is unbiased, everyone has got their point of view and they are going to push their agenda according to their point of view.
fractiousrhubarb t1_jayq43u wrote
Source? i.e. can you send a link to the original site this image came from?
btw- it’s worth mentioning that if I really wanted to know a specific thing about oil imports I’d go to wherever the trade data info originally came from, that being as close to reality as I can get.
[deleted] t1_jaytkae wrote
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bobsafepayment t1_jb1xk8f wrote
Cannot trust any source these days because they all have their bias.
People are going to push the opinions with they believe in so it depends on your perspective also.
fractiousrhubarb t1_jb26rs3 wrote
But you must trust the source of the image you posted, otherwise you’d not have posted it?
The “can’t trust any source” meme is actually designed to work for the right/ corporate interests. Collective actions requires trust. Anything that harms trust empowers the right.
I trust media independent media outlets like Crikey.com.au and MichaelWest.com.au
I don’t trust News Corp because it was founded by an Australian mining magnate (in 1922) specifically to make propaganda.
krucen t1_jaz3gyu wrote
What's the issue? Crude oil isn't the only oil we import.
I can't truthfully say we've doubled cracker imports, by only pointing to a doubling of graham cracker imports.
Larry_Linguini t1_jaz8zb8 wrote
Alright, you may be on to something here.
[deleted] t1_jawpr4x wrote
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CaudallyReinsure396 t1_jb00upf wrote
The concept of reality is different for everyone because everyone has different kind of ideologies that they believe in.
And what you may think is true or not depends on which side you are on.
fractiousrhubarb t1_jb03p6p wrote
People have different world models, but the difference between a delusion and reality is that reality is still there when you stop believing in it.
In this case you could repeat the same experiment (ie, looking at the same set of posts) and fact check them against reality (an example of which could be political voting records) to find out if they contained misinformation, categorize them on whether which party they supported and tabulate the results.
It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a reasonable and justifiable description of reality.
Aerojhh t1_jazklec wrote
There are ways to conduct the study but the problem is how you are going to bring people on a consensus.
Because people believe what they are seeing on the social media.
[deleted] t1_jaw0vdf wrote
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