“the … perception has emerged that ours is a particularly dark time for

political ‘truth.’ It isn’t. Throughout history, presidential campaigns have

been consistently dishonest.” Michael Moynihan, The Daily Beast

“The Zionist regime's establishment was

based on numerous deceptions and lies and

one of the biggest lies was the Holocaust.”

- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The vast majority of facts we know about the world, we know through what other

people tell us.

For example:

• Abraham Lincoln was President • Admedinejad actually said that • Admedinejad is President of Iran • The Nazis killed six million Jews

How do we know whether “testimony” is

true?

References

Journalists

Experts

Authoritative Sources

Event

Source

You

Opaque testimonial

chain

Trust

“Several articles I wrote or co-wrote were based on this faulty intelligence, and in May 2004, The Times concluded in an editors' note that its coverage should have reflected greater editorial and reportorial skepticism.”

“It’s now common knowledge that [Snopes is] owned by an ultra-liberal San Francisco Bay area couple, but until now only a handful of people knew they were bankrolled by George Soros, one of Obama’s primary financial supporters.”

Judith Miller

“‘ News

reporting’ from

well-established

news outlets is

generally

considered to be

reliable for

statements of

fact.”

‘test’

“Networks of knowledge on the Net have no shape because the Net has no outer edge. Besides, it doesn’t stay still long enough.” - David Weinberger, Too Big to Know

I disagree.

Knowledge has a shape, and it is

extremely rich and interesting.

Event Evidence

Witness

Witness

* Analyst

Evidence

Memory

Documentation

Testimony

Perception

Attention

Distortion

Failure Modes of Perception

Interpretation

Forgetting

Failure Modes of Memory

Confusion

Confabulation

Encoding

Objectivity

Competence

Sincerity

Failure Modes of Testimony

Event

Witness

Witness

* Analyst Reporter

98%

90%

80% 95%

After analysis of the failure modes, we could assign confidence levels to each step. All of the steps need to transmit the truth, so we multiply to get the overall confidence in the chain.

.98 x .90 x .80 x .95 = .67

Event Analyst Reporter

If we have multiple independent confirming sources, we increase our confidence.

(1-.8) x (1-.2) x (1-.95) = .008 [99.2% confidence]

Reporter

Reporter

95%

20%

80%

Collaborative

Synoptic

Correlative

Failure Modes of Independence

Google Search Showed coverage of this in:

Forbes Esquire

Huffington Post International Business Times

RawStory MSN Now

and dozens of others

So it’s probably true: Independent, trusted

sources. Right?

But there was one problem.

All of these articles were based on a single

blog post on MSNBC

And all it said about credit cards is:

“Aides taking cabs home late that night got

rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked. ‘Fiscally conservative,’

sighed one aide the next day.”

Event

Analyst

Reporter

*

Reporter

Reporter Witness

Reporter

Reporter

Reporter

Synoptic Failure

Event

Analyst

Reporter

*

Reporter

Reporter Witness

Reporter

Reporter

Reporter

Synoptic Failure

• Garrett Haake, reporter for MSNBC • Embedded with Romney campaign • Nominated for four Emmys • Makes one biased comment in article • MSNBC body of work: generally biased • No named source attributed • Suggests more than justified by known facts • And I tweeted him for good measure

Evaluating the Witness / Reporter

Quality

Context

Genuineness

Failure Modes of Documentation

It has structure. It mostly exists

online.

Could it be partly automated?

“Take no one’s word for it.”

“Take no one’s word for it.”

Credulous Trusting Skeptical Paranoid

How much it matters

When evaluating claims: • Find multiple, independent testimony chains

– Evaluate the independence –Use Google, not just links

• Evaluate the quality of each chain, at each step • Get as close as possible to the original event,

including looking for original documentation

What we should insist on: • Writers state and link to all their sources! • Digitize and post original documentation!

Join the Truth Brigade!

If you repeat what you hear

from liars, fools, and clowns,

what does that make you?

• Seth Herd (CU Boulder)

• Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload (Kovach, Rosenstiel)

• Too Big To Know (Weinberger)

• Testimony and Epistemic Authority (Fricker)

• Pathologies of Testimony (Coady)

Acknowledgements and References