“The Misinformation Age” Bias, Conformity, and False Belief.
In an era where new information constantly comes at you from your community, television, and social media feed, it’s not uncommon for you to develop a belief that’s not entirely true, and these beliefs can even often be harmful to you and the people around you. Cailin O’Connor, a philosopher of science and professor at the University of California, Irvine, actively seeks ways to stop that misinformation from getting to you, and one of the ways she does this is by touring the nation and spreading awareness through public seminars. On Wednesday, January 22nd, one of those public seminars were held at Southern Oregon University, and happened to be closely related to the university’s campus theme for this academic year, being “Uncertainty”. O’Connor came to talk about her recent book titled “The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread”, as well as present some of her findings in her studies and bring more awareness to the campus. O’Connor’s hour-long presentation revolved around how much the average person really knows about the world around them.
“We are in the middle of a crisis of false belief and misinformation”
Roughly 99% of our beliefs stem from other people, whether that be religious, theoretical, or even factual beliefs, the majority of them happened to stem from people learning them from other people. O’Connor opened up with this fact and with a story of a 14th-century knight named Sir John Mandeville. This knight was a real traveler who claimed towards many people that there happened to be a plant in central Asia that grew lambs. He continued writing and telling people about these lamb-plants that people started to believe him, and they continued to do so for 400 more years until it was proven wrong. O’Connor expressed this story, showing that misinformation is real and can spread for longer than anyone would have expected. In the modern era, O’Connor stated that this misinformation can come from three primary concepts: “Conforming and Polarization, Industry Influence, and Journalism.”
“Conformity biases tend to make the beliefs of a community worse”
O’Connor brought the audience to a study that took place in the 1950s, one where multiple groups of eight people were given the exact line test shown here, all they needed to do was match the line on the left to the correct line on the right. Seven out of the eight subjects were planted and told to say that line A was the correct answer, while the real eighth subject answered last. One out of three times the test was done, the subject would follow suit and agree that line A was the answer, when it is obvious to most that line C is correct. O’Connor presented this test to show that people tend to conform to what is said around them, whether that belief is true or false. She was also able to relate this conformity to a current dilemma, showing that the anti-vaccination communities tend to be within tight-knit groups. If someone were to disagree with that community who happened to be in it, they would most likely stay quiet as to not cause any issues.
“Produced data can sometimes completely mislead the public”
O’Connor’s second stance had to do with industry influence and its use of selective sharing, as well as biased studies. Another story was brought up on the first discovery that tobacco was linked to lung cancer in the 1950s. When this happened, big tobacco companies funded research groups to create semi-realistic studies that they could use to continue to promote their products. If 20 out of 100 studies produced results that weren’t causing cancer, and a tobacco company was to say something along the lines of; “We did 20 tests, and none of them produced cancer-related effects.” Technically, the tobacco company would be correct but would have just selectively chosen the results that worked in their favor. Which naturally can produce a lot of harmful and misleading information. O’Connor went on to explain that these strategies can be as noticeable as the example above, or can be very subtle with behind-the-curtain funding and management. So often it can be tricky to pinpoint when these misleading strategies are taking place.
“Even unbiased journalists, adopting industry best practices, can promote false belief”
O’Connor’s final point of the presentation was about the current state of journalism and how it is very easy to spread false information without even really knowing. In 1949, a policy for American journalism was established, titled “The Fairness Doctrine”, this revolved around the idea that if there was more than one side to a story, then all parties must be given equal time and coverage within a report. A policy that seems positive and productive on a surface level, but as O’Connor explained, can often turn to fairness taking over factual science. Using the recent resurgence of flat-earth believers as an example: It has been proven numerous times that the earth is in fact a sphere-like shape, yet it’s also common to see reporters giving airtime to the deniers of these facts. Even though the fairness doctrine was abandoned in the ’80s, the concept of fairness is still very fundamental within the journalism community, even in situations where giving light to a side only worsens the situation as a whole.
With all of these points in mind, Cailin O’Connor closed out her informational speech with the significance of social media, and how it can easily amplify these points tenfold. Purchase her book on these topics and more below.
