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Study: Most Students Can't Spot Fake News (engadget.com)
Even those who think that the U.S. Presidential election wasn't affected by the swath of fake news articles swirling on Facebook and other social media networks, they tend to agree that there is a lot of misinformation on the web. At Slashdot, it's hard to say that anyone here will not be able to tell fake news from a real one. But what about kids? How is our future generation doing? Not so well, apparently. An anonymous reader shares an Engadget report:A Stanford study of 7,804 middle school, high school and college students has found that most of them couldn't identify fake news on their own. Their susceptibility varied with age, but even a large number of the older students fell prey to bogus reports. Over two-thirds of middle school kids didn't see why they shouldn't trust a bank executive's post claiming that young adults need financial help, while nearly 40 percent of high schoolers didn't question the link between an unsourced photo and the claims attached to it. Why did many of the students misjudge the authenticity of a story? They were fixated on the appearance of legitimacy, rather than the quality of information. A large photo or a lot of detail was enough to make a Twitter post seem credible, even if the actual content was incomplete or wrong. There are plenty of adults who respond this way, we'd add, but students are more vulnerable than most.
Teach logic to preschoolers, I say.
But that might lead to critical thinking.
"His name was James Damore."
The participation awards and the focus on self-esteem have done their part, certainly.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
"At Slashdot, it's hard to say that anyone here will not be able to tell fake news from a real one."
Judging by some of the discussions over the last few days on similar articles I doubt this.
Hillary lost to a despicable loud-mouthed clown because the electorate looked at her and found a lying, unscrupulous, corrupt, unlikable, arrogant harpy whose only accomplishment is marrying Bill Clinton.
Quit trying to excuse Hillary's loss. It's all on the Democrats who selected her to run for President.
This clearly illustrates the one area where schools lack: critical thinking
Our school system is really only designed to enable rote memorization:
Memorize your multiplication tables.
Memorize the dates of the Egyptian empire
Memorize the themes in To Kill a Mockingbird
Memorize that mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell
They are given a book, told "this book is truth, memorize this book," and so yeah, seeing an article with ulterior motives would throw them for a loop.
If you want better politicians, you need a better populace. If you want a better populace, you're going to need a better public school system that teaches students more than just numbers and facts. We need to teach them how to think critically, how to examine the world around them, and how to leverage the internet as a nearly unlimited resource, while being wary of the ability for any random jack-hole to post some spurious shit on their blog.
This signature is false.
I'm fucking sick of this narrativr being pushed on Slashdot. Your first clue that it's politically motivated should have been President Obama using his presidential podium to bitch about it. Your latest should have been how quickly China latched onto the bandwagon. Those with longer memories might recall that China has enforced internet censorship using this exact rationale before; "anti-social misinformation." But "fake news" is much more succinct - it implies that "real news" can only come from "real news sources." Coincidentally this endless propaganda blitz only started after it was revealed how much election info people got from their friends on Facebook. It's yet another media attempt to solidify - nay reclaim - their oligarchal status as outlets that people trusted implicitly. One need look no further than their current behavior - where they are issuing hysterical semons about Trump being "the least transparent President in history" because he didn't inform the media before stepping out for a fucking steak dinner - to see the depths of their panic. After a campaign season where they dropped the last pretenses of objectivity and did their level best to destroy Trump - only to see him win the Presidency - they know their former sainted and respected status as Messengers From Olympus is no more. They can shriek and rage and stomp their feet all they want but nothing will change this. Trump uses Twitter to speak to the masses directly, which underscores the point: they are not just no longer trusted, but no longer needed.
No number of propaganda articles will change that.
This is a dunning-kruger problem. The only way you can tell if something is fake or not, is if you already have at least some knowledge about the subject matter. If there's an article from a trusted news source about how Intel put out a 6GHz CPU, the first thing I would do is check if the date is April 1st because I know about the problems involved.
If an article says someone has discovered a liquid form of a higgs-boson condensate, how would I know different? I mean, it's a condensate , obviously it must condense somehow.
And to make matters worse, in the US there are truth in advertising laws but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent for news. At least, I assume that must be the case, because I can't fathom how Fox News could be viable otherwise.
Fake news is nothing new, and certainly not specific to this past election. The only thing different is that people are finally starting to wake up to how serious of a problem it is.
I had an amazing teacher in middle school. He'd teach us exactly that--how to spot propaganda, false advertising claims, etc. It was probably the best set of lessons I ever learned because now I'm impervious to all the crap.
Of course, if he was teaching today they'd try to brand him as a communist or a "leftist" (whatever that means) because teaching kids to think might make them question capitalism (it does) or religion (ditto).
Questioning is not the same as rejecting, at least if you have a brain, but I was once married to a teacher and she also taught her students logical analysis like my favorite teacher had: the number of fundamentalist dipshit parents who had it out for her was amazing. Yeah, she had the occasional bout of trouble from the special snowflake crowd, but that was dwarfed by the control freak religious nutjob parents.
All the major new outlets are guilty of publishing opinion pieces as if they're real news. Maybe not totally made-up fake, but just as bad.
In the literal sense, they are retarded compared to children of similar age 40 years ago
I disagree. You just got a clearer picture of how uninformed and underdeveloped people are. You are looking through the rose colored lens of history. Kids by far and large are trusting. They are not a cynic because nothing has caused them to second guess others. Parents blow smoke up their asses about 'be what you want to be'. Then when they act what little they have been taught they get a huge blowback. They then meltdown on the internet. We see them as stupid and uneducated. By comparison to someone with say 50 years of experience they are. However, I clearly remember my piers as in gradeschool. They are no better or worse than what I see today of the same age group. *WE* get to see more of it more clearly because the internet gives everyone a sounding board to spew whatever comes to mind. The young and old alike. It looks terrible. Because it is. However it is no worse.
Also to judge by my facebook who are 99% 'older people' they are no better. They pass on whatever stupid cogitative bias they have. They are just more articulate about it. They are also in many ways harder to persuade that they are wrong. They have many years of 'experience' to tell them 'how life is'.
But that might lead to critical thinking.
Unlikely. Most teachers benefit a lot from the educational status quo, which is defended by the Democratic Party. College professors are the most politically biased group in America. According to some polls, only 3% of them voted for Trump. Our educational system is the problem, not the solution, with a strong vested interest in indoctrination rather than thinking.
You are confusing propaganda with news. Trump saying something on twitter isn't news. Somebody posting an article on facebook isn't news. You have to have a vetting process, and a check/verification process, be it at the editor, but more rpeferably at the reading end too. And no matter what side of the political process you, both Democrate and republican are faulty of using hoax stories, let us call them by what they really are. You take trump as example, but even he fell down the trap with that so called "jihadist" video which was an hoax.
During the hayday of journalism , say 1940 to 1970-80ish , this vetting and verification process was understood, and serious journalism rose above the yellow press. But starting 1980ies and strongly 1990ies, it declined because people are pretty damn cheap. So vetting and serious investigation dropped, dropped and dropped until the cost are so much cut that every damn idiot copy/paste one source be it a AFP , Reuter or a 3rd party rag, check it, they even don't bother changing the wording. Heck now people are considering the shit out of facebook news. It isn't. They are just stories, as likelies to be hoax, taken out of context, or even news, without vetting or fact checking you can't tell. Since there is no vetting process on either side (writing/reading), no double check , those hoax get spread. heck scam too. Steorn. Rossi eCat. And so forth. How often I tried to get people to spot the warning sign ? And get ignored because I am a "liberal" or a "rightwingnut" (depending on the slant of the story I try to point out has problem) or even a "close minded scientist" ?
And frankly, I have been saying for years it is a problem, albeit in skeptical forums, not here. The problem is that critical thinking is a skill one need to learn because it is pretty damn easy to fall into one's bias as long as they go the way one politically think. Nobody Is teaching critical thinking. So for years we have been seeing hoaxes rise as stories and being handled seriously. Heck among skeptic group, what do you think we try to fight for ? Critical thinking is THE skill everybody should be getting. And yet again I predict that this will fall by the byside , being seen as propaganda from butthurt people.
The only point where you are right, is that a lot of media are butthurt now and see that as a problem. But that does not mean the problem is not real. It is real, and I have seen the rise of hoax and scam being treated very seriously , far more than previously in spite of fact checking being so easy nowadays.
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Q: How the hell do you screw up making a grilled cheese sandwich?
At this, I question your own critical thinking skills. The two obvious ways are undercooking and overcooking, which can be a matter of time or heat, or both.
Then there is a matter of ingredients, and methods. I could possibly conceive of more.
The foibles and failings in cooking are well-known and hardly new. Many of them are rather easy to do. They've been fodder for comedy for centuries.
But you treat it is somehow meaningful and significant. It validates the conclusion that you want to have, rather than being an unimportant detail of no real consequence. Nothing new to that either, plenty of stories contrasting one wise fool versus some foolish sage.
Go ahead though, look down upon others, judge them with your wrath. It probably won't come back to bite you.
What is all this sudden bullcrap about "fake news" in a country where it is LEGAL to fictional ALL news (thanks to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation's multiple lawsuits in federal court) and where the Koch brothers are responsible for most of the "content" on NPR, and everything on PBS and Frontline?
I mean, WTF is all this Prof. Elizabeth Sindars/Merrimack College (WTF that is????) bullcrap about???? This is the Land of Fake News, and has been during my lifetime.
And now . . . for some Non-Fake News . . . .
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
Blah-blah-blah. Nothing new to your lines.
Odds are you probably don't have clear memories or experiences with the idiocy of children 40 years ago, let alone 60, 70, or 100. Or 200. Or 400.
Whether or not you remember it or not, ignorant and stupid adults exist today, and as kids were the ones who were begging their parents for the latest Sugar-frosted cereal, the latest toys (how along ago was the Cabbage Patch kids craze?), and so forth back then. The same as kids today.
People have been pushing sophisticated bumfuckery for quite a long time, it's just now instead of being a transient flim-flam artist trying to get out of town before being tarred and feathered, it's easy to reach the whole world, and nobody around you cares enough to give you what you deserve. And yes, we can see a lot more stupidity too, since everybody can get a camera and put it on Youtube.
Same with language. It's always been a pretense that language is somehow supposed sophisticated and proper, and a true sign of intelligence is who can follow the rules best. That is not the case. Math, history, current events? I wish you could be transported back in time to see things as they were. Not that you couldn't tell how ignorant the aforementioned adults are today, or look in the papers to see how ignorant the adults were, but it'd be more authentic if you could truly see things as they were.
And actually, since you mention IQ, the 100 being the median is entirely a matter of choice, as the whole process is a constructed one. At least thermometers are based on actual physical principles at some level, IQ is far more divorced from that, but far too many people don't realize that.
I had an amazing teacher in middle school. He'd teach us exactly that--how to spot propaganda, false advertising claims, etc.
That's great! No, I really mean that. Blessings on that teacher.
It was probably the best set of lessons I ever learned because now I'm impervious to all the crap.
Errr...your lack of self-awareness is astounding. Don't flatter yourself. Yes, you--even you--approach the world with a set of biases. To think otherwise is just myopic. The trick will be to identify those biases and confront them when you see them.
I had an amazing teacher in middle school. He'd teach us exactly that--how to spot propaganda, false advertising claims, etc. It was probably the best set of lessons I ever learned because now I'm impervious to all the crap.
Of course, if he was teaching today they'd try to brand him as a communist or a "leftist" (whatever that means) ...
Actually he would alternately be branded a communist/leftist and a racist/misogynist/[something]-phobe depending on whose propaganda was being scrutinized.
:-)
There, I reject your implication that it is only the right offering false claims.
But that might lead to critical thinking.
Unlikely. Most teachers benefit a lot from the educational status quo, which is defended by the Democratic Party. College professors are the most politically biased group in America. According to some polls, only 3% of them voted for Trump. Our educational system is the problem, not the solution, with a strong vested interest in indoctrination rather than thinking.
Or maybe, just perhaps, those college professors know something you don't. Just a thought.
Yes, they know the world of scholarly journals and ivory towers. Not necessarily the real world. The more we move from hard science to soft science the more their teachings are opinions and beliefs, often politicized ones. If you think professors are beyond such things you have not spent much time around them.
I never knew about Breitbart news until this election, and after following them for the last 3 months I think they're probably the best example of actual news reporting on the net. The site is right-wing slanted, but the actual reporting appears to be high quality and accurate.
You should avoid the obvious trollery; you almost had me for a second there.
I never knew about Breitbart news until this election, and after following them for the last 3 months I think they're probably the best example of actual news reporting on the net. The site is right-wing slanted, but the actual reporting appears to be high quality and accurate.
Facepalm. I was tempted to stop reading at this point. But then you said:
Compare with, for example, Huffington Post which had at the bottom of each article about Trump, the statement: "Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims—1.6 billion members of an entire religion—from entering the U.S." A direct quote, and I personally saw this at the bottom of several HuffPo articles.
And I call BS. Where did you read this? In the comments section? I just looked at several Trump articles on HuffPo and did not see the quote you mentioned.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
repeating the same right wing talking points that have been used since Regan to cut funding to education and public services.
Let's see, where do I begin:
1. Real wages are down. Way down. You can't spend money on sh*t you need if you don't have it in the first place. You can't budget what isn't there. And you can't pay your way through college on $17k/yr (full time min wage) when tuition alone is $11k of that, scholarships are dried up or hyper competitive and even borrowing doesn't pay enough to get you through.
2. Kids have learned plenty about cause and effect. See above. They've got the math skills to see they can't afford higher education. Why don't you?
3. Did it ever cross your mind that that 2nd year college kid might just be exhausted from working and studying full time?
4. The "precious little snowflake" movement was an educational movement started by real teachers who had actually studied real students. As opposed to knee jerk armchair commenters like yourself. What they found were millions and millions of unwanted children who existed because their parents had sex. Kids who got little or no positive reinforcement at home and who'd been conditioned to failure. It's a solution for combating that. If you knew anything about teaching or education you would know this. This is what happens when you take something that looks easy (teaching) but is actually really, really fucking hard and don't leave it in the hands of experts. This is gonna get me modded down but fuck it, I got karma to burn: Elites are elite for a reason. Donald Trump is not elite. My friend's mom who just finished her Doctorate in education? Yeah, she's mother fucking bad ass elite.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-voters-huffpost-racism-misogyny-xenophobia_us_5728de49e4b016f37893b698
Here's the article saying that the editor would post that note on every Trump-related article on the site. Okian Warrior was 100% right. They did post that quote all over their site. Take your fact-checking machine and trash it. It's failed you.