Also: how do you identify a work as peer reviewed?
I don’t fully believe anything I can’t test and verify myself. Thank fuck NASA left things on the moon you can ping to prove they went there.
How do you go about evaluating sources of information for truth/credibility/etc.?
Submitted 4 weeks ago by ALostInquirer@lemm.ee to [deleted]
Comments
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 4 weeks ago
ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
…Does NASA have something on the web that lets people ping the Moon, by any chance?
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 4 weeks ago
I don’t think so. You need some special equipment that isn’t too difficult to get.
Bahnd@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Sorta…
We left a bunch of retro-reflectors up there, if you got really good aim and a sensitive detector, you can bounce lasers off the moon. If you science hard enough you can probably pull it off.
we_avoid_temptation@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
This is not exactly what you’re talking about but it’s close and actually is available on the web: check out the camera feeds from ISS. Pretty incredible to just watch the world literally go by.
Jarix@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I dont have an answer other than vet with an authority you trust (be it wikipedia, a teacher a friend, a parent)
But this is not a stupid question. Its probably the most important question when making a decision in this modern techno era to have an answer for yourself
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 weeks ago
It's peer reviewed if it has the name of a peer-reviewed journal on it. If it's on arxiv (a pre-print server) it's not. (Or not yet, or published on several platforms/journals.)
ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
It’s peer reviewed if it has the name of a peer-reviewed journal on it.
Where do journals indicate that they are?
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 weeks ago
A lot of them will have a front matter, a Wikipedia article. Be cited a lot. And you'll find them in a university library. You might even have access to a library's catalogue without being a student or member.
EABOD25@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Experience of credibility with a source. If you know a news site is credible, then it’s appropriate to trust at least most things.
If it’s a journal or a blog, then it’s most likely opinion with no real substantial evidence.
Experience of the writer of the source. A lot of official articles will have a small bio about the writer or at least their name so you can research the writer.
Citations. That’s all on that point
Site security. If it’s an unsecured site, then it is not a good source of information
Verbiage. If bias or insulting language is being used, then it’s a bias source which makes it a bad source.
dustyData@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The discussions here are a bit prosaic, though valid, but on a higher philosophical view you can check Descartes Discourse on the method. It is the basis of all natural sciences and the philosophical foundation of science and rational truth establishment. Maybe grab an explaineer on those ideas.
There are further developments that discuss the sociological proceeds of the scientific community. But the best start point is to always check any statement of truth and fact for four things: controversies, criticisms, corrections and praises. With those four elements you can assert for yourself the credibility of a source’s claims.
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
To some extent, I don’t.
Which is to say that in and around my field (biochemistry), I’m pretty good at sort of “vibe checking”. In practice, this is just a subconscious version of checking that a paper is published in a legit journal, and having a sense for what kind of topics, and language is common. This isn’t useful advice though, because I acquired this skill gradually over many years.
I find it tricky in fields where I am out of element, because I am the kind of person who likes to vet information. Your question about how to identify work as peer reviewed seems simple, but is deceptively complex. The trick is in the word “peer” — who counts as a peer is where the nuance comes in. Going to reputable journals can help, but even prestigious journals aren’t exempt from publishing bullshit (and there are so many junk journals that keeping up even within one field can be hard). There are multiple levels of “peer”, and each is context dependent. For example, the bullshit detector that I’ve developed as a biochemist is most accurate and efficient within my own field, somewhat useful within science more generally, slightly useful in completely unrelated academic fields. I find the trick is in situating myself relative to the thing I’m evaluating, so I can gauge how effective my bullshit detector will be. That’s probably more about reflecting on what I know (and think I know) than it is about the piece of material I’m evaluating.
In most scenarios though, I’m not within a field where my background gives me much help, so that’s where I get lazy and have to rely on things like people’s credentials. One litmus test is to check whether the person actually has a background in what they’re talking about, e.g. if a physicist is chatting shit about biology, or a bioinformatician criticising anthropology, consider what they’re saying with extra caution. That doesn’t mean discount anyone who isn’t staying in their lane, just that it might be worthwhile looking into the topic further (and seeing who else is saying what they are, and what experts from the field are saying too).
As I get deeper into my academic career, I’ve found I’m increasingly checking a person’s credentials to get a vibe check. Like, if they’re at a university, what department are they under? Because a biochemist who is under a physics department is going to have a different angle than one from the medical research side, for example. Seeing where they have worked helps a lot.
But honestly a big part of it is that I have built up loose networks of trust. For example, I’m no statistician, but someone I respect irl referenced a blog of Andrew Gelman’s, which I now consider myself s fan of (statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu). Then from that blog, I ended up becoming a fan of this blog, which tends to be about sociology. Trusting these places doesn’t mean I take them at face value for anything they say, but having that baseline of trust there acts as a sort of first pass filter in areas I’m less familiar with, a place to start if I want to learn about a perspective that I know the rough origin of.
In the context of news, I might start to see a news outlet as trustworthy if I read something good of theirs, like this piece on 3M by ProPublica, which makes me trust other stuff they publish more.
Ultimately though, all of these are just heuristics — imperfect shortcuts for a world that’s too complex for straightforward rules. I’m acutely aware of how little spare brain space I have to check most things, so I have to get lazy and rely on shortcuts like this. In some areas, I’m lucky to have friends I can ask for their opinion, but for most things, I have to accept that I can’t fact check things thoroughly enough to feel comfortable, which means having to try holding a lot of information at arms length and not taking it as fact. That too, takes effort.
However, I got a hell of a lot smarter when I allowed myself to be more uncertain about things, which means sometimes saying “I don’t know what to make of that”, or “I think [thing] might be the case, but I don’t remember where I heard that, so I’m unsure”, or just straight up “I don’t know”. Be wary of simple and neat answers, and get used to sitting with uncertainty (especially in modern science research).
ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Thanks for the extensive response! I appreciate the perspective, particularly the nuances on peer review, and the grounded conclusion.
gedaliyah@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
There are different standards in different fields of knowledge. Medical science is different than journalism, which is different from history, which is different from public safety.
In general, a given field has sources that publish information with the highest standard of credibility. In many fields, these are peer-reviewed journals. They may be published by large universities (Harvard Law Review, Oxford Review of Economic Policy), by government bodies (e.g. Smithsonian Magazine, NIHR), by professional organizations (eg. JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine), or operate independently (e.g. The Lancet, Nature).
rimu@piefed.social 4 weeks ago
Media literacy crash course https://youtube.com/watch?v=sPwJ0obJya0&list=PL8dPuuaLjXtM6jSpzb5gMNsx9kdmqBfmY&index=1&pp=iAQB
Mickey7@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
If we can agree that all “news” sites slant to the right or the left. Then you should check out the story at a few of both leaning sites.
sircac@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The main point is to be able to handle uncertainties in a normal basis, the greyness of reality, despite the temptation of blacks and whites of our minds.
For sure it costs a lot. The consideration of the superposition of possible truths and the weight of potential biases is a huge burden without granted full coverage, but allows you to accumulate a landscape of plausibility of things: yes, is not 100% precise and is still built by personal prejudices but, with a systematic acceptance of new bits of information regardless of how comfortable they are, it can grow a mostly reliable understanding of reality with a variable amount of temporary uncertainty on some facts… and you can still convert greys into quasi-b&w once they reach a decent amount of independent evidences, you now, to free a bit your RAM.
Alice@hilariouschaos.com 4 weeks ago
Ok, so, OBVIOUSLY, you know absolutely zero There’s not even a such thing as ‘consensual ass spankings’ so I don’t even know why you brought it up.
If OP wants more oreos in his cereal? Fine, so be it. But that doesn’t change the fact that you fuckin suck at Diddy Kong Racing.
I swear man.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Credibility is earned by being consistently credible. A source that posts misleading or false articles can be assumed to not be credible, and I don’t trust them just like I don’t trust people who say stuff that ends up being not credible.
With newer information, concensus between difference sources us a good indicator as well.
What I am far more likely to use to dismiss something is checking out the purpose of the group. If they have a website and their description sounds like a weasel pretending to be a benevolent protector of a hen house then I just ignore them. Anything that sounds pie in the sky, like revolutionizing or disrupting an established industry is probably another Theranos and easily dismissed. If they say anything that sounds like conservative doublespeak, they get ignored.
It seems to be a pretty reliable system even if the occasional thing that is too good to be true slips in because I want it to be true. But having low expectations and recognizing potential being different from the results helpas a lot with being pleasantly surprised when things turn out better than they sounded.
MNByChoice@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
A small thing, and only for “creator” content and people. If they say multiple things, some you know about and some you don’t, then evaluate the stuff you know. If you detect bullshit in the stuff you know, throw it all out.
Someone that lies on one thing is fully untrustworthy.
Clearly doesn’t work when you are wrong.
Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
No person nor source gets it right all the time, I like your idea as an evaluative technique but I think the assumption that being incorrect here is necessarily because of lying might mean discounting a lot of sources/creators who are otherwise reputable. I’d look at it more like degrees of doubt cast over everything else they say where you don’t have the expertise to evaluate the accuracy. Much like a driver’s licence, you get dinged enough times for more and more infractions and eventually you lose your license. If they keep continually getting things wrong where it’s something you know something about eventually you can probably discount them on anything else as well, but if it’s just once or twice, especially where they’re not egregiously wrong, some benefit of the doubt could be beneficial to all concerned. Better I would have thought to take what feels like their salient points on the content they produce on topics where you aren’t knowledgeable and check if other people are claiming anything similar and where something is verifiable, try to verify. Of course theoretically you should do that all the time but in practice at least each time you know someone is wrong about something it’s an indication that for them specifically further checking is required.