Concerning lies on the Web, a reader writes:
When I cite Snopes.com as a reality check to some online they generally dismiss it as liberal lies. So…
Yes, I’ve noticed during the searches that some lead-ins suggest that Snopes is liberal and untrustworthy as well. I could dismiss this as the conservatives running around with cotton in their ears, screeching to avoid reality.
But that ignores the legitimate, and ancient, question: Who watches the watchers? Or, more to the point, who fact-checks the fact-checkers? How do we know Snopes is trustworthy? They have a long and respected history, but, like professional sports, what have you done for me lately? As questions about fact-checkers become more acute, we may see services which spot-check the various fact-checkers, perhaps randomly selecting entries. But then who checks … never mind.
But that lets me transition to the next question: for those who refuse to accept as true certain conclusions, no matter how well supported, what then do we do? While I think that, in the long run, such folks’ divergence from reality will gradually lead them to disappointing results, even to spectacularly tawdry endings (such as the fellow who invaded the pizzeria to start this thread), in the short run the cultural cognitive dissonance is certainly unsettling, much like the science denied by those Congresscritters who dislike having their favorite preconception destroyed, whether it be climate denial or various new-Age medical approaches.
But to my mind, there’s two things at work here. First, there are facts: whether or not there’s evidence of, say, a child-sex operation, or temperatures rising around the world. And then there’s the conclusions to be drawn – we didn’t investigate enough, or someone spread lies maliciously; the temperature rise is caused by human activity, or by solar activity. The fact-checkers do need to constrain their statements to the first group, since that’s how they describe themselves; the second group should be handled by advanced experts, although these days just about anyone with a keyboard will render an opinion, and often will be outraged when they’re told they don’t have the expertise to have an opinion.
Such is life today.
