Intelligent People also Fall for Fake News During a Pandemic

/

A recent article from the BBC, “Why smart people believe coronavirus myths” laid bare the simple truth: even those with high-level credentials from top-notch institutions of higher education are at risk of believing fake news and misinformation during a crisis, like our current COVID-19 public health emergency.

David Robson, the author, points to a couple of phenomena that psychology of misinformation researchers have identified as being at play when it comes to fake news during a pandemic. First, we judge simple messages that “feel true” and are accompanied by an image and a vivid personal anecdote to be trustworthy. Furthermore, when that message is repeated, it feels more true to us.

Second, we are likely to pass on misinformation without even judging it. Maybe this is because there is a chance the information could be true and we don’t want to be a gatekeeper. Or maybe we are pawning off the task of evaluating the information when we share it - we take a “buyer beware” mentality. Or maybe we are simply interested in puffing up our own egos by trying to generate “likes” on our social media posts.

Regardless of the reasons why this plays out, the cold, hard facts are that we are more likely to pass on misinformation than we are to believe it. In a study of misinformation and headlines about COVID-19, 25% of participants said the “fake news” headlines were true. But 35% said they would share the fake news headlines. Ten percent of people are forwarding fake news that they do not necessarily believe to their contacts, thereby reinforcing the first point: repeating a simple message makes it feel more true.

Finally, some humans are “cognitive misers” - that is, we have enough brain power to discern fake news from truth, but we are reluctant to expend it evaluating the veracity of the story. This was demonstrated with a simple “cognitive reflection test.” As quoted from the article**:

“Consider the following question :

—Emily’s father has three daughters. The first two are named April and May. What is the third daughter’s name?

Did you answer June? That’s the intuitive answer that many people give – but the correct answer is, of course, Emily.

To come to that solution, you need to pause and override that initial gut response. For this reason, CRT questions are not so much a test of raw intelligence, as a test of someone’s tendency to employ their intelligence by thinking things through in a deliberative, analytical fashion, rather than going with your initial intuitions.

Thanks to Mr. Robson, we are armed with the information about why we are susceptible to falling for bogus stories about COVID-19, even if we are intelligent and well educated. What should we do with it? As the author states at the end of the article: “[W]e are going to need a multi-pronged approach to fight the dissemination of dangerous and potentially life-threatening misinformation. And as the crisis deepens, it will be everyone’s responsibility to stem that spread.”

So with that in mind, here are some resources to help you with fact-checking information about COVID-19: from the Central Michigan University Libraries and the Michigan State University Library. These sources aren’t only for you. They are for everyone with whom you share information. When you stem the spread of fake news about COVID-19, you help stop information that could lead to very bad outcomes.

**In the spirit of transparency, and to let you know that you are not alone in this simple unscientific test of cognitive miserliness, the writer of this post, Bryan Whitledge, thought, “June,” immediately upon reading the question.

Fake News... Can be... Fun?

/

Throughout the year, Critical Engagements has explored fake news and misinformation, and the various insidious ways it eats away at our society: climate change deniers, anti-vaxers, misrepresentations of the actions and beliefs of groups in our society, the erosion of trust in journalism, universities, and other trusted sources of information, and more.

But today, we’re taking a different angle on fake news. Sometimes, misinformation, especially an elaborate ruse meant to hoodwink large swaths of the population for nothing more than enjoyment, can be fun. Sometimes, it can lift our spirits when we buy into something for just a moment, then realize how gullible we were, and finally smile and say to ourselves, “That was a good one.” Sometimes, when "fake news” is called by another name, like “April Fools’ Day jokes,” we get a kick out of it. So today—April Fools’ Day—the fake news holiday—we share some classic April Fools’ pranks that have gone down in history. We’re sure you’ll be left smiling and saying “that’s a good one.”

The Left-handed Whopper: In 1998, Burger King took out a full-page advertisement in USA Today announcing their new menu item—a Whopper designed for south paws. The sandwich was rotated 180 degrees and the toppings were arranged in a mirror orientation to the original in order to accommodate the eating habits of lefties. Thousands of lefties (and maybe a few righties looking to live dangerously) went to their local Burger Kings asking for the new menu item, only to realize they were had by fake news.

Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect: According to celebrated and trusted British television personality and amateur astronomer Patrick Moore, on April 1, 1976, the perfect alignment of Jupiter and Pluto would cause, on Earth, a temporary reduction of the effect of gravity. He even told his BBC audience that those who jumped up in the air at 9:47 am would notice a floating sensation as a result. The BBC reported receiving hundreds of phone calls of people saying they noticed the decreased gravity… before it was announced that it was just a hoax.

Taco Liberty Bell: In 1996, the corporate sponsorship of anything and everything was on the rise in America.** It was also a time of particular popularity for the rarely-out-of-fashion claim that government spending was out of control and the national debt would cripple our country. It was amid the confluence of these two aspects of American society that Taco Bell seized the moment and hatched the perfect April Fools’ Day stunt. Taco Bell took out full-page ads in several major newspapers on April 1 to announce that, in an effort to reduce the national debt, they were buying the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia—that hallowed symbol of American independence—and they were going to rename it the “Taco Liberty Bell.” Of course, the ad caused a visceral reaction. Thousands telephoned the National Park Service and Taco Bell to decry the spoof arrangement… until noon, when it was announced that Taco Bell was just playing with us.

**For those too young to remember, the White Sox played at Comiskey Park, not Guaranteed Rate Field, and the Orange Bowl was not the FedEx Orange Bowl or the Discover Orange Bowl or the Capital One Orange Bowl.

NPR’s “Why Doesn’t America Read Anymore?” Article: In 2014, NPR posted a story on their Facebook page with the headline “Why Doesn’t America Read Anymore?” Those who clicked on the story found a note telling readers that it seemed like people were commenting on news stories without actually reading the content. So, NPR decided to have some fun with this by asking those who actually read the story not to comment and simply “like” the story. Then, NPR and those who had read the story could watch the mayhem develop in the comments section. As you can imagine, comments akin to “We totally do, NPR. Shut up. We read all the time. We're reading your article right now!” appeared on Facebook comments. Happy April Fools’ Day.

Mt. Edgecumbe Eruption: This may be the most elaborate April Fools’ Day prank in history. Porky Bickar, a Sitka, Alaska, practical joker planned for four years to fake the eruption of a local dormant volcano—Mt. Edgecumbe. He needed the perfect day when the weather would be just right. So, on April 1, 1974, when he saw beautiful clear skies, he put his plan in the action. He worked with a team of co-conspirators to take a helicopter up to the mountain to ignite a ton of old car tires in the crater. The result was thick, black smoke that rose from the dormant volcano. Residents of Sitka, who saw the smoke and thought Mt. Edgecumbe was active again, started to worry. The Coast Guard was also alerted to the volcano's activity. When the Coast Guard sent a helicopter up to inspect, they found a large tire fire and, in 50-foot letters spray-painted in the snow, “APRIL FOOL.”

Bad Medicine: Misinformation as a Common Remedy During a Pandemic

/

What is it about public health emergencies that draw out the quacks to offer us tidbits of misinformation? If you have yet to catch wind of some of the untested (and frankly, dangerous!) remedies for COVID-19 that have been touted by non-medical professionals, then you have missed hare-brained notions such as drinking bleach to prevent infection, drinking water every fifteen minutes to “keep your mouth moist,” which supposedly prevents infection, drinking colloidal silver to kill the infection, and even taking cocaine.

None of these “treatments” will prevent you from contracting COVID-19 nor are they a cure. In fact, you are potentially doing more harm to your health by following them. To be sure, to protect Americans, infamous televangelist Jim Bakker has been sued by the State of Missouri and warned by the US Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission for selling colloidal silver, which the FDA notes is not an actual treatment for COVID-19.  

But all of this “fake news” about COVID-19 is nothing new. This is not the first time a pandemic has changed life for millions around the World. And not the first time unscrupulous charlatans promoted outlandish remedies during a public health emergency. Just over 100 years ago, the World was in the grips of a deadly influenza pandemic. By the time the multiple waves of the virus circled the globe, about one quarter of the world’s population had contracted the flu and tens of millions had died as a result. Just as today, public health experts offered sound and responsible advice for staying safe—advice that will be remarkably familiar to anyone today. From the Oxford Leader, out of Oakland County, Michigan, you could “fool the flu” by:

  • Not going to work while sick

  • Not spitting in public

  • Not visiting those who are sick

  • Not going to indoor meetings

  • Avoiding crowds

  • Not panicking

  • Covering your face when you cough and sneeze

  • Getting plenty of rest

  • Washing your hands and face often

  • Calling a physician at the first sign of sickness

But that sensible advice wasn’t the only information circulating. Other less-reliable remedies were being printed in newspapers and spread by word of mouth. Advertisements for Laxative Bromo Quinine could be found touting the anti-cold and flu properties of the medicine. Camphor was another treatment that was suggested as a cure for the flu—it was even said to be effective when a piece of camphor was mixed with the tobacco in a cigarette or a pipe!

Eating onions was also put forward as a treatment for the flu. Raw onions were said to be better than cooked onions. But syrup from onions was thought to be beneficial, too. And it seems that people didn’t even need to eat the onions for the benefits—a mother in wrapped her daughter head-to-toe in onions to keep her healthy. Maybe the joke printed in the El Paso Herald was actually the most true benefit of the onion treatment:

“Eat onions. No germ likes onions and, besides, if you eat onions people will keep away from you, and that is important in checking the influenza epidemic.”

100+ years later, we can easily dismiss eating onions or crumbling some camphor into a tobacco pipe as “snake oil.”  But, now that we are in a similarly extraordinary and uncertain time, we see how an off-the-wall idea might be appealing if there is any hope that it might keep us safe. In such times, the best ways to stay safe are to follow the advice of the most trusted experts—experts who don’t peddle in fake news, but provide information based on the best research and data available. Check with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the State of Michigan’s coronoavirus-specific webpage for more information about protecting yourself and others from COVID-19.

Historic information about remedies during the 1918 influenza pandemic drawn from Catharine Arnold’s “Eat More Onions,” found in Lapham’s Quarterly, September 13, 2018.

Announcing “Perspectives On Pandemics,” a One-Credit Course Starting April 6

/

The Critical Engagements team has recruited professors and experts from around CMU’s campus to create a special pop-up course to address the coronavirus crisis from a variety of perspectives. (What’s a pop-up course? See the Chronicle of Higher Education for an introduction.)

“Perspectives on Pandemics” (LAR 397D) is a one-credit online class that runs from April 6–May 3, 2020. Taught by professors with expertise in biomedicine, economics, history, public health, literature, medical anthropology, and public policy, the course features four weeks of lectures, discussions, readings, and other materials that will offer a contextualized examination of COVID-19 and other pandemics in world history and culture.

Registration for LAR 397D is open now. Contact Christi Brookes for details or register directly using CMU’s Course Search and Registration portal. Updated information about the course will also be posted on the COVID-19 page hosted by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.

CE Updates

/

Critical Engagements and this blog are run by a small if unusually dedicated staff who have been scrambling, like the rest of the world, to keep up in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. We’re professors and parents trying to create and manage the headspinning transition to online learning and online everything. So we want to take a moment to observe or announce three things.

First, when we created Critical Engagements and began planning its annual themes in 2017, we could hardly have envisioned a “Question That Matters” quite so comprehensively as the coronavirus, or that engages our past and future topics this directly and urgently. A list of the themes makes the point for us:

The dots don’t need much connecting but COVID-19 has made us think in new ways about boundaries and people on the move; it has lots of people talking about the end of the world (and using the word ‘apocalyptic’ with unusual frequency); it has been the subject of both brilliant reporting and fatally misleading claims; and it has reminded us of what it means to be human in the midst of a crisis.

Second, because of the scramble and the teaching in particular, we haven’t been able to update this site in the way we’d hoped. Just when fake news (and its opposite) become more urgent than ever, we’ve not only had to cancel this year’s remaining events but also have had to interrupt our regular updates to the blog. This is, to be sure, a minor irony among the many that have emerged with the virus: our urge to be among and with our people, physically, or to be out on the streets or in homes or shelters doing what we can to help — all these turn out to be exactly what we can’t do now. So we apologize, and announce here our resolution to make it right as soon as we can. [Update: See our new course, “Perspectives on Pandemics,” for a down payment on this promise.]

Third, we’re also delighted to announce that part of the solution has already arrived, in the form of a generous offer of help from Bryan Whitledge of CMU’s Clarke Historical Library. Regular CE followers will know Bryan already from previous posts, panels, and events, but we’re especially glad that he’s offered his own expertise in archives and (sometimes fake) news, to help keep us and our readers up to date. Stay tuned, then, for guest posts from Bryan and the Clarke.

Data shows who was reading “fake news” before 2016 US election (Ars Technica)→

/

Writing for Ars Technica, Scott K. Johnson has a useful summary of fake news research by Andrew M. Guess, Brendan Nyhan, and Jason Reifler, recently published in Nature Human Behavior.

Overall, the researchers conclude that “widespread speculation about the prevalence of exposure to untrustworthy websites has been overstated.” Of course, not everything is captured in their dataset, like content viewed purely within Facebook, for example, or the effects of misinformation on the broader information ecosystem. But it is a unique study that supports what others have found—a relatively small fraction of the public is consuming much of what the researchers call “factually dubious content.”

Conspiracy theorists blame U.S. for Coronavirus. China is happy to encourage them. (Washington Post)→

/

From Washington Post China correspondent Gerry Shih:

As new coronavirus cases and the sense of panic ebb in China, the country that was first struck by the disease has been gripped by a wave of nationalist pride, conspiracy theories and a perennial mix of anti-American sentiments: suspicion, superiority, schadenfreude.

Wes Lowery Livestream

/

From our Evening With Wes Lowery (January 23):

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wes Lowery visits Central Michigan University. Lowery is a journalist for The Washington Post and a CNN political contributor. He is the author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement (2016), which describes his experiences while reporting on the 2016 Ferguson unrest and also chronicles the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“An Evening with Wes Lowery” (January 23)→

/
Lowery_Wes_WashingtonPost_web.png

Please join us on January 23 at 7:00 PM in the Bovee University Center Auditorium for “An Evening with Wes Lowery.” Wesley Lowery is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist for The Washington Post, a CNN political contributor, the author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement (2016), which describes his experiences while reporting on the 2016 Ferguson unrest and also chronicles the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

This event is free and open to the public and will also be available on our livestream starting a few minutes before 7:00 PM. Sponsored by the Department of Journalism, the College of Arts and Media, and Critical Engagements.

→ Open event flyer

‘Disinformation’ Is the Word of the Year — And A Sign Of What's To Come (NPR)→

/

Fresh Air’s Geoff Nunberg:

My choice of “disinformation” needs some explaining. It isn't a new word — just one of the family of names we give to the malignancies that contaminate the public discourse, along with “propaganda,” and in particular “misinformation” and “fake news.” Each of those last two was chosen as word of the year by some dictionary or organization in 2017.

But over the past couple of years “disinformation” has been on a tear — it's 10 times as common in media headlines as it was five years ago, to the point where it's nudged its siblings aside. That rise suggests a basic shift in focus: What most troubles us now isn't just the plague of deceptive information on the Internet, but the organized campaigns that are spreading the infection.

Britain’s Secret Propaganda War (BBC)→

/

BBC Witness History (9 minutes, audio) on “Britain’s Secret Propanda War: How Sex, Jazz and ‘Fake News’ Were Used to Undermine the Nazis in World War Two”:

In 1941, the UK created a top secret propaganda department, the Political Warfare Executive, to wage psychological warfare on the German war machine. It was responsible for spreading rumours, generating fake news, leaflet drops and creating fake clandestine German radio stations to spread misinformation and erode enemy morale. We hear archive recordings of those involved and speak to professor Jo Fox of the Institute of Historical Research about the secret history of British “black propaganda.”

“Open-Label Placebos and Self-Deception” (Brian Coleman, November 22)→

/
PHL Placebos.png

Join us on November 22 (2:00 PM, Anspach 167) for a Philosophy Lecture and Colloquium on “Open-Label Placebos and Self-Deception” led by Dr. James Brian Coleman (CMU).

The placebo effect has long been seen as a kind of “fake news” of the medical world: intentionally deceptive medicine that happens somehow to have real results. But could placebos in fact be a sort of fake news patients tell themselves?

Recent research on the placebo effect shows that there can be a positive therapeutic result even when the patient is fully informed of the placebo’s inert content. The medical literature refers to such placebos as “open-label placebos.” Traditionally, objections to placebo use center on the apparent requirement of some degree of deception in their application, which violates requirements on respect for patient autonomy. But do open-label placebos involve some form of deception? The question this paper pursues is whether open-label placebos imply self-deception. If so, is this ethically problematic? The paper concludes by speculating about the implications of the relation between self-deception and autonomy for clinical medicine in general.

 Free and open to the public.  Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Religion.

→ Open event page

Archives: The Solution to Fake News?

/

If you spend time on social media—or with any media, for that matter—you are probably sick of seeing and hearing accusations of “Fake News!” You may feel frustrated and helpless in the face of the onslaught. After all, here in the United States misinformation and lies are protected by the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court reaffirmed in U.S. v. Alvarez in 2016. 

But fear not: You have a friend in archives. Archives contain evidence, and it’s the mission of archives to preserve evidence, so that people can use it to distinguish fact from fiction. 

In her recent book, A Matter of Facts: The Value of Evidence in an Information Age (Chicago: ALA/Neal-Schuman/SAA), scholar Laura A. Millar distinguishes between facts and evidence. “A fact is a statement that is consistent with reality or that can be proven by an analysis of available evidence. Evidence is any source of information that provides demonstrable truth.” (13) Verifiable documentary evidence, such as undoctored photos, textual documents, electronic messages, and other materials held and protected by archival institutions can be used to prove something is or isn’t true.

I work for the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, which is one of the 14 presidential libraries that is part of the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA.* It is NARA’s goal to have 500 million pages scanned and available online by 2024. As of the most recent count NARA has more than 86 million pages available online (out of 235 million pages scanned), so the goal may not be as outrageous as it initially sounds. 

If you think at all about the National Archives, you probably know it as the place that keeps the documents that define our nation. Yet the records protected by NARA are at the forefront of today’s news. For example, NARA continues to release documentation on the pre-Supreme Court career of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh served on the staff of President George W. Bush and worked as an assistant independent counsel under Kenneth Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton. 

Many of Kavanaugh’s records are in the form of emails, which raises another issue that must be addressed in the battle against fake news. The most critical struggle archives face is the need to protect and preserve electronic records that are considered permanent but are in imminent danger of erasure or obsolescence. Regular backups, multiple storage locations, trusted digital repositories, and frequent checks for data corruption are all weapons archives are using to fight the digital preservation battle. 

Posting digitized records to prove the truth or falsity of a statement is one way to quickly support an argument or discredit a claim. I’m on the social media team at the Carter Library. While all of NARA’s dozens of social media accounts operate under certain guidelines, including ones specific to federal employees, NARA generally gives us free rein to promote our collections and our facilities in ways we see fit. 

I have discovered that Twitter can be useful for clearing up misconceptions, correcting the record, and answering questions. I refuted the frequently cited claim that Jimmy Carter’s favorite movie was Gone With the Wind by finding a clip of the President speaking to the audience at the American Film Institute’s 10th anniversary gala in 1977. What he said then was, “It was a great movie. It’s not quite as good now as it was then,” which is not exactly a ringing endorsement. 

Another repeated tale suggests President Carter switched his hair part from the right to the left side, which is why he lost the 1980 election. Google “hair part theory” and you’ll discover there is a field of study that measures the success of people who move their hair part from one side of their head to the other. I found a letter to Carter suggesting he change his part, but if you look at the letterhead, you’ll see that it’s from a college fraternity! So was it a prank? We know from photos that Carter did change the hair part soon after the letter arrived … but we can’t prove cause and effect. I posted the letter to Twitter to get it “out there” for search engines.

In July, historian Andrew Rudalevige tweeted that I fact-checked him by retweeting him a copy of a page from the President’s Daily Diary, because Rudalevige cited the incorrect date for the president’s famous “Crisis of Confidence” speech. And I also used Twitter to respond to a blogger’s post about Carter’s alleged UFO sighting, offering the president’s own version of that event. 

In all these cases the documents and footage provided the evidence, and Twitter served as the means of dissemination. If you can throw facts “into the universe,” as historian Kevin Cruse suggests, they can live on and show up in searches when future inquiring minds are seeking answers.

All the scans attached to records in the National Archives Catalog can be downloaded for free. They are in the public domain. Several years ago when I worked at the National Archives at St. Louis, PBS aired an episode of American Masters about legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix, which contained false and misleading information about his military career. NARA-St. Louis had Hendrix’s official military personnel file (OMPF), so we knew he did not receive an honorable discharge due to injury or awards of valor for jumping out of planes. The misinformation was subsequently repeated on Wikipedia, a CBS News webpage, and at a commercial military-themed site.

Shortly after the American Masters episode aired, NARA’s cataloging staff decided to add records from the St. Louis archives’ Persons of Exceptional Prominence collection to the National Archives catalog. And we had James Marshall Hendrix’s OMPFuploaded in the first batch, so the evidence would be there for people to read for themselves. I had the Wikipedia page changed by using the link to his record as evidence, to correct the error.    

You too can take advantage of the National Archives’ records, or records that are digitized and freely available on the websites of hundreds of other archival repositories, to fight for the truth. And here are some other suggestions for fighting fake news:

With tools such as these, you’ll have a better chance of being able to arm yourself against fake news. And remember, the evidence is in the records. 

* Daria Labinsky has been with the National Archives and Records Administration since 2010 and has been an archivist at the Jimmy Carter Library since 2017. She worked as a journalist, editor, and indexer for 25 years and has co-authored four books. The opinions reflected here are her own and not necessarily those of the National Archives and Records Administration. This blog post is based on a presentation originally given at the 2019 Council of State Archivists—Society of American Archivists’ Joint Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas.

“Facebook and Fake News: How Misinformation Is Spread and Why We Fall For It” (November 20)→

/

Please join us on November 20 (6:00–8:00 PM, Anspach 162) to learn more about the role of social media in spreading “fake news” and the psychology behind why we believe untrue messages. After a screening of the PBS special The Facebook Dilemma, CMU psychology faculty members Sarah Domoff, Kimberly O'Brien, Kyle Scherr, and experimental psychology graduate student Brian Kissell will lead a panel discussion. Sponsored by the Department of Psychology and Critical Engagements.

→ Open event flier (PDF)

“The Alternative University” (Robert Davies and David Staley, November 18)

/
Staley_Alternative_Universities_book_cover.jpg

Please join CMU President Dr. Robert O. Davies and Dr. David Staley on November 18 (5:30–6:30 PM, Opperman Auditorium, Park Library) for a conversation about innovative visions of higher education. 

Dr. Staley is director of the Humanities Institute and associate professor of history at The Ohio State University. His book, Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education, examines opportunities to re-envision the university. What do the universities of the future look like? What will the students of the future need? Will their universities have buildings, gen-ed, or traditional disciplines? 

→ Open event flier (PDF)