Read and confirm before you hit share
My Facebook feed is a magnificent thing; it provides constant but not overwhelming updates about the people I care for and the people and organizations whose updates I find interesting and worth reading. That was not always the case. My feed used to be filled with game updates ranging from the number of virtual farm animals someone had to someone else requiring me to hit like for them to become the ultimate Mafia boss, religious images asking to be shared to bring the sharer good fortune and spiritual peace and the occasional personal assertion of never again believing in love. It still contained a few gems, but usually buried underneath a lot of nonsense. Then I discovered that I could permanently disable those updates that I found distasteful, intellectually offensive or downright disgusting. It even allows you to disable updates that were shared by someone you know but did not originate with that person. For example, let's say my favorite aunt just shared an event from her retiree association, which is not relevant to me. I still want to see photos from her latest home improvement project, so I can just disable the association's updates, even those coming through my aunt.
Doing this kind of filtering, quite often at the beginning and less and less often as time has passed, has increased the amount of things on my Facebook wall that I want to at least look at, by my estimate, 40% to 50% of everything that ends up there. I have even made one or two purchases of products placed by Facebook on my wall, based on what they deemed to be my preferences. There is still a sizable amount of posts that are utterly useless, say 40%, but that is really very manageable compared to the not too distant past in which I was all but unable to reach the content on my wall that I would care about. Now, there is still a third group of updates, which as a collective, prompted me to write this. They are what I would call "fake information no one bothered to check before sharing".
For the purposes of this article, I will go over three bits of news that showed up on my wall, shared by people I know but originated elsewhere, and tell you why I think it was wrong to share them. All three are originally in Spanish, but a translation should be easy to find, or even an original version in English.
Fidel Castro and an astonishing prediction in 1973
This one was reproduced in an Argentinian newspaper and a few other news sources. It says that, in 1973, Fidel Castro, Cuba's dictator, said the following:
The United States will come and have a dialog with us once they have a black president and the World has a Latin American Pope.
If he had said that, it would have been incredibly prescient and a great anecdote on the retired Cuban leader in light of the recent visits of both an Argentinian Pope and the first African American president to the island. Problem is, he did not say it. In the era of Google, this is an easy one. Just go ahead and launch a search for "Brian Davis interviews Fidel Castro". In my search, the second result is a link to The Guardian, a newspaper in the United Kingdom, which not only debunks the story but provides some interesting insight into its origin. Bottom line is, Fidel is considered by some a visionary, others may think less highly of him, either way he is not a prophet, not on account of this at least.
Harvard scientists confirm that Peppa causes autism in children
Autism. If autism had to be equated to a physical object, it would be a huge umbrella underneath which too many things are placed these days. "It's not that I'm not paying attention to you, I'm just being autistic". There is a popular book on the subject by Temple Grandin, listed below under Sources, about autism itself and the constant abuse the subject suffers. Good read. Now to the article. Peppa Pig is a children's show in the United Kingdom, apparently quite successful, I did not check on that. In 2012, researchers from the University of Harvard published the results of an experiment that confirmed that watching the show is one the main causes of the development of autism in children. The article gives the name of one of the lead researchers, an epidemiologist named Marc Wildemberg, and a concerning fact: Children exposed to at least 30 minutes a day of the show have a 56% higher probability of developing autism. If you have read this far, you probably know where I am going with this, so you are also probably not running to turn off your television. The report is bogus. Names of scientists, directors, experts, researchers and any other authority listed in these things usually give you a good starting point when validating the truth behind that little thing you are about to share with all your friends (hopefully not me). Searching for Marc Wildemberg on Google will give you a bunch of reproductions and variations of the same article on autism. If you take Google's suggestion to search for "Marc Wildenberg" instead, you will run into a Facebook and a LinkedIn profile, none from our beloved Harvard epidemiologist. A great alternative search is "Harvard research on autism" which will offer you a link to scholar.google.com, containing a list of autism research done by Harvard University. Sad to say, Peppa Pig, porcine champion of autism, is not there.
Terrifying discovery. UN asks to prohibit school homework around the World
I ran into this one this morning, and it became the proverbial third strike that prompted this rant against fake news. In this one, a researcher from Duke University, Harris Cooper, unequivocally states that:
We have found no evidence that homework helps children to become better students.
There it is. My seven year old was right, there is no point in having her finish her homework every day. She also said that by doing so I was "ruining her life", but I do not buy that yet. Harris is not alone, the article continues, professor Etta Kralovec, from the University of Arizona agrees with him, homework adds no value to our children's learning process. Because of this, the World Health Organization, through their representatives at the United Nations, are already doing the due diligence to have homework abolished worldwide (maybe they should organize some book-burning events, just to make sure homework does not stage a surprise comeback). Before letting your kids continue binge watching Rescue Bots, let's do one last search. Harris Cooper, surprisingly, does exists; he works for Duke University and he did publish a study on the benefits, or lack of, of homework. His results are less dramatic, though. Ironically, there is indeed good correlation between the amount of homework and academic success, to a certain extent, meaning that homework overload will definitely not make you a better student (I added a link to an article on his study under Sources). So, Harris was real, but he was almost criminally misquoted. How about Etta? She is also real, and does work for the University of Arizona. Even more revealing, she co-wrote a book called The End of Homework. No, no binge watching yet. She has some very interesting points, none of which is that homework needs to be abolished. One of them, though, is the concern that excessive work outside of the classroom may increase the gap between students that lack the most basic requirements to do schoolwork at home; for example, think of kids that have to take care of younger siblings while both parents work to make ends meet, as opposed to students with ideal conditions, like a room of their own, with a desk, proper lighting and plenty of time. I suppose one possible solution for such situations is to have more school work done at school instead, reducing in turn the amount that has to be done after class to keep a level playing field. This was an interesting example, as real researchers and their publications are being twisted to fit a sensationalistic headline.
Conclusion
Believe me, I am not just trying to further improve the quality of content that lands on my Facebook wall. I can still block all those bogus news articles that you share without thinking, that you somehow thought were real and even useful for other people to see. I can even block you, although you would have to be a major waterfall of useless content for me to do that. I am just asking you to do the following before sharing, and inadvertently adding unwarranted credibility to, a story you ran into:
- Make sure you read the entire article.
- Ask yourself if what you just read may be completely false, partially false or twisted to favor one particular agenda.
- Check the sources mentioned. Is the researcher a real person? Did that university really publish a study on that subject? Does the study really says what they are telling you it says?
If you do these three things and you end up with doubts, leave that share button alone and help stop the spread of ignorance.
