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Virus Scares and False Authority Syndrome
Fifth of Five writes: "Ran across this article on the IS-IT-TRUE.org site regarding False Authority Syndrome and the spread of virus misinformation by the media, users and Folks Who Probably Ought To Know Better. If you've ever watched the TV news and gritted your teeth over what is being presented as 'fact' this may shine some light on just how it got to be like this."
People keep on forgetting that public media is in the attention business ... it is in their economic interest to sensationalise news in order to flog those accompanying ads (a bit of a problem for CNN when there's no major wars going on). As such, manufactured fluff (ie press-releases) is easier to regurgitate than any in-depth research or second-hand opinions (syndicated columns). Historically public media was part and parcel of the lecture circuit (aka rubber chicken show) where you would invite real authorities and experts to come in and air their thoughts in a proper interview. However, two general trends mitigate against this ... the increasing complexity of real-world issues (anyone who thinks Middle-East is a simple case of good-guys/bad-guys is in deep trouble) which limits the potential audiences interested in understanding the issues, and the move to tabloid style audience capture which tends to confuse celebrity with fame. Why should sports-heros and actresses (apart from the convenience of recycling pre-existing studio contracts) be ask to comment on areas way outside their domain? Why should TV shows get people from the entertainment field to present business news (and you wonder why the stock market is irrational). Unfortunately those with real knowhow gained from the school of hard knocks tend to be people who charge for their services ... would you want a surgeon who has never practised on patients before so why are we willing to listen to highly filtered news passed along by talking heads? It's becoming nothing more than a massive Chinese whisper in a global cocktail party.
... the /. ask XYZ is a particularly good way for the plebs to touch some of the people involved in the thick of things.
... ultimately people have to realise there is a cost in misleading/diluted information (e.g. did anyone notice that the bard-wire concentration camp story that helped sparked the Balkans intervention and sundry bombings was filmed on the inside looking out?).
Fortunately we have some countervailing examples
LL
The economic models which are the equivalent of yelling "fire" as loudly as possible to rush people to newsfeeds are creating some really bad incentives
I must get warnings for "Wobbler" and "All Seeing Eye" sent to me by my [L]users all the time, but you know what? It's a fair cop.
.vbs files, I warn. And most of all, I know that many here will cringe when they read this, I actively encourage my [L]users to forward me all the warnings they get sent to them.
/dev/null.
I set up filters, I block the sending and receiving of all
Know why? After the 4th one I send back to them with an URL and a "Thanks, but that one was a hoax", they start to catch on (well... many of them do). Some also start to forward any and all messages with attached files to me if they weren't expecting them. Again, many here may cringe, my email box is huge and I spend hours each day weeding through false alarms sometimes. But IMHO it's worth it.
Do you know how many actual FULL outbreaks this company has seen in the last year? One. Back in November of last year. It was Navidad and it was sent to a Hispanic employee (the CFO actually... hehehehe) from a relative, and since it was near Xmas, well, I forgave him. AFTER I made HIM clean out his own machine and then lambasted him in front of the entire company. But when people first saw the SIRCAM virus come in, even users who had not read my warnings yet spotted it instantly and sent it to me. This was before I'd set our mail server to send all messages with "I hope you like the file that I sendo you" in the body to
All things considered, though, seeing as this office is almost entirely Windows, I think my methods work. Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, it can be annoying. BUT, I rarely have to restore from backup, and we haven't had any major outbreaks.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Maybe the reporters -- and their audience -- simply aren't cynical enough?
An example --
Might have been yesterday or the day before, but either NBC or CBS had a brief piece on some study regarding red wine. The anchor implied that the study showed that people who drink red wine tend to have better social status, higher intelligence, and what not...
...and, IIRC, completely ignored fundamental questions such as what variables were controlled for, such as whether non-drinkers could *afford* the red wine/dinner party/"cultured" lifestyle. Correlation versus causation went unmentioned, as if the anchor were merely reporting a press release.
Similarly, the editors of "Social Text" -- apparently, a left-leaning social studies journal -- were severely burned when they published the infamous Sokal Hoax; the editors claimed that they accepted it primarily on the basis of the reputation of the author (a physics professor). One suspects that they didn't bother reading the paper very much, since it's quite deliberately impenetrable nonsense. I highly recommend looking at it for amusement's sake.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
You can't. Not only am I a geek, I'm a geek who flies planes. For both computer related stuff AND aviation related stuff, they get it completely and totally wrong. With aviation, they sensationalize even more than they do with anything to do with the 'net or computers, spouting opinions based on zero knowledge (and it shows).
I no longer watch the news on TV. Print news I feel is a little better depending on the source - it's not nearly as sensationalistic - but I still take everything with a big enough grain of salt that you could make a large livestock salt-lick out of it.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The best writers I've seen, like Larry King often does, is find two well informed sources and get them to discuss it, in a civil manner. Too bad that takes too long for the average attention span to ... hey, are you still with me on this?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yet one more reason to use the BBC!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and yes, that'll get you UK-focussed news but they're not just aiming for eyeballs for advertisers. I'm delighted that we have something like this and they're probably my primary news source.
Having said that, they still got some home users worried about Code Red...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
As in the TV news, to get that big Scoop, the goal is getting it out before the other guy. At least in the news papers there's some time before going to press to research it. But as it comes with Hi-Tech, Internet, etc., there's few people who really are qualified to speak, hence they go to their regular contacts. Once that contact has lost sufficient credibility they move on to another. Notice how the experts get put down, but the newsies blissfully continue on. The only newsperson I can recall who's been sufficiently spanked is Pierre Salinger.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I read the essay. I haven't read the book. But just from the essay, I wonder if a potential flaw in the experiment has ever been considered (I know nothing about psychology)
Obviously the `teacher' had discomfort about administering the shocks. But it seems to me that the teacher was just delegating the moral responsibility of care back to the experimenter. The teacher may not have known about the actual effects of the shocks (and labelling the switches with voltages may not be a good idea because people's understanding of the actual numbers vary), and just trusting that it was safe, because the experimenter was implying it.
Of course, the `learner' banging on the wall is a different thing :)