Google's Featured Snippets Are Worse Than Fake News (theoutline.com)

Adrianne Jeffries, reporting for The Outline: Peter Shulman, an associate history professor at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, was lecturing on the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s when a student asked an odd question: Was President Warren Harding a member of the KKK? Shulman was taken aback. He confessed that he was not aware of that allegation, but that Harding had been in favor of anti-lynching legislation, so it seemed unlikely. But then a second student pulled out his phone and announced that yes, Harding had been a Klan member, and so had four other presidents. It was right there on Google, clearly emphasized inside a box at the top of the page. "I understand what Google is trying to do, and it's work that perhaps requires algorithmic aid," Shulman said in an email. "But in this instance, the question its algorithm scoured the internet to answer is simply a poorly conceived one. There have been no presidents in the Klan." Google needs to invest in human experts who can judge what type of queries should produce a direct answer like this, Shulman said. "Or, at least in this case, not send an algorithm in search of an answer that isn't simply 'There is no evidence any American president has been a member of the Klan.' It'd be great if instead of highlighting a bogus answer, it provided links to accessible, peer-reviewed scholarship."

Comments

Rank reputable sources

[ranton]

If sites like Google and Facebook want to let algorithms decide which information to highlight, they will need to spend more time doing human assisted ranking of various information sources. Crowd sourcing will be very helpful here, but you will still need some human moderators who can perform real research to help determine which information has credibility. I know too many otherwise intelligent people who are becoming so disenfranchised they just don't believe anything they read anymore, which is the ultimate goal of these misinformation campaigns.

Re:Rank reputable sources

[pastafazou]

Yes, that's all we need is crowd sourcing to help determine the truth. Popular opinion should matter more than actual facts.

Re: Rank reputable sources

[Anonymous Coward]

While helpful, I still agree with pastafazou. Truth cannot be determined by consensus.

Re: Rank reputable sources

[ClickOnThis]

AGW is a proven fact, the Consensus Opinion of Scientists says so.

Scientists don't just pull consensus opinions out of their asses. They do experiments and observations to check their hypotheses. And then they publish them, to allow their community to scrutinize and test them further. Consensus develops gradually over time, as ideas survive this treatment over and over again.

Please note, I am not saying AGW is false,

Except you are.

I'm simply saying that consensus opinion is masquerading as "fact" in the biggest science debate, and yet nobody seems to notice.

In science, the facts are not opinions. They are the experimental results. Your claim that nobody notices a supposed debate about conflating facts with opinions is just sloppy posturing and conspiracy-mongering.

Teaching moment

[jbmartin6]

I wonder if Prof took the time to review with the students the difference between a search result and a fact.

Unfortunately...

[bluegutang]

It'd be great if instead of highlighting a bogus answer, it provided links to accessible, peer-reviewed scholarship."

That scholarship is behind a paywall.

Re:Who will algo the algos?

[ancientt]

I'm more bothered by the implication that the results of an internet search engine should not return results representing what's on the internet.

Peer reviewed

[senatorpjt]

Maybe the problem is that the incorrect information is free and the peer-reviewed article costs $30 to read.