Metafact.io has launched in alpha with 625 expert answers so far…
After many months in pilot mode, we are excited to announce our alpha launch of Metafact.io — where people can source trusted facts direct from top experts and researchers across the world. We’ve been lucky to already publish hundreds of evidence-based answers from NASA scientists, Harvard Professors, Neuroscientists, leading AI engineers, climate scientists, evolutionary linguists and over 600 other experts.
Pilot. One of our first fact-checks was to ask the Malaria scientific community if it was true that the newest therapies are becoming resistant to the parasite? You can view this example and read the answers here:
In a few days we had 36 top Malaria researchers across the world share their answers and evidence with a near unanimous agreement (97%) to the proposition — which is scary considering there are over 200million cases worldwide (If you are a Malaria expert, you can contribute to this too by registering as an expert).
Why is Metafact.io needed today?
The Problem: Misinformation spreads faster than the truth
Our daily lives are dependent on making informed choices. From the foods we eat, the products we buy to the medicines we use, we rely on others (media, companies, personalities) being truthful. But how often do you hear media stories, data, opinions, posts or claims that you think: “Really. Is that true?”. As individuals, we don’t have any way to question claims made important in our lives.
Technology now enable agendas, spin and misinformation to go viral with greater velocity & impact than ever before. A recent study showed that false information spread 6-times faster than the truth on Twitter and reaches up to 100 times the audience.This is a big problem, since without knowing what is reliable or truthful, people cannot make better decisions that help their lives, their country or the world around them.
Our Solution: A platform to verify facts from experts that allows the emergent truth to spread quickly.
Our solution with Metafact.io is to empower anyone to directly ask experts to verify a claim they have read and for a consensus score to quickly aggregate and spread, allowing people to make better judgments on questions important in their lives.
Over time, we aim to build an open ‘fact-based firewall’ that allows anyone to learn and quickly share the current consensus from thousands of independent experts who best know the facts and share the evidence.
We come from Science
Metafact combines the power of Wikipedia style crowd-sourcing with the scientific method itself. Within science, claims are continuously scrutinized and taken through a collective review process via many other experts. This is sometimes called a ‘meta-analysis’. Over time, claims that have no basis in evidence die and the emergent truth flourishes.
We want everyone to ask questions about anything related to their lives, products and societies. We will seek to find the most trusted independent experts to verify the claim. But like a meta-analysis in science, we ask many experts to answer allowing a consensus to be presented. This aggregated more scientific approach in answering questions diverges significantly from existing fact-checking sites or Q&A platforms, allowing people to learn and act on trusted scientific evidence.
Built by Scientists & Engineers
The metafact platform has come from the same team of scientists and engineers behind thinkable.org, the science competition platform. We are passionate about progressing a scientifically-engaged population with technology as the core catalyst. Our own team culture has 3 core scientific principles that we aspire to build amongst the wider metafact community:
Be curious. We continuously question everything. This allows everyone to adapt and find the best outcome.
Be open. We follow open science principles, meaning all of our content can be accessed and shared without limitation. We only ask that you attribute us and the experts when sharing.
Be independent. We don’t take sides –ever. The only thing we don’t compromise are the facts.
Community driven.
We are passionate to spread the truth direct from science without advertising or external funding from organisations. We will always make facts & evidence open, freely accessible and shareable. If we can grow enough ongoing support from citizens, we can keep it this way.
We’ve launched a Patreon page for our monthly supporters who can get their questions answered by scientists along with receiving exclusive perks and material (digital cards, stickers, t-shirts etc) to learn about, support and share the truth. All pledges go to running the platform and hiring part-time scientists to curate the questions and answers (once we reach 500 supporters).
We also have a MetaFact merchandise store with t-shirts, hoodies, stickers and mugs where not only do you get to wear and share your own passion about why facts matter, but all proceeds support the running of the platform. Patreon supporters get 10% off..
Our journey to build a platform that allows everyone to question everything, to learn the facts & mobilise the truth has just begun.. We hope you can join our community either as a Metafact member to ask questions or register as an expert to share the evidence!
Ben, Barry & Ernie
Metafact.io team
