Wading through the rampant disinformation in media today requires a healthy dose of skepticism We live in an age of information and misinformation simultaneously. Never has there been so much useful information and so much nonsense to weed through. This puts a great deal of responsibility on the shoulders of those who consume media. It…
Portraying views opposed to those held by health experts stokes needless controversy When they launched their study, Timothy Caulfield and Marco Zenone could hardly have anticipated how the issue would capture headlines in Alberta. And yet they decided to examine how the common COVID-19 vaccination requirement for organ transplant recipients is represented in the popular…
Show should be reclassified as “science fiction” rather than “documentary” Since the controversial documentary series Ancient Apocalypse dropped on Netflix last November, academics and journalists around the world have been incensed at its false claims and misinformation. Earlier this month, the Society for American Archaeology wrote a letter to Netflix urging the platform to reclassify…
While no one person has the answers, each of us plays our part in solving life’s mysteries The American rapper GZA hit the nail on the head when he said, “Live a life full of humility, gratitude, intellectual curiosity, and never stop learning.” This is one of the greatest keys to happiness. No person has…
Telling someone to "do the research" may in fact do more harm than good
The expression that beauty, or art, is in the eye of the beholder means that it’s the viewer who decides. The same is true of the beholder of news stories. More simply, new research shows us, again, that news consumers see what they want to see. The latest research data comes from the ongoing conflict…
When it comes to the lust for power, the first victim is always the truth
The Trudeau government has taken #fakenews, #alternativefacts, #misinformation, and #disinformation to a whole new, breathtaking level. This week, the Liberals introduced legislation that will freeze the buying, importing, and selling of handguns and pretended gun owners won’t be affected. You may agree or disagree with that approach, but what is clear is that if you…
But what happens when disinformation campaigns run headlong into reality?
I’m not a fan of making predictions because there are usually way too many variables at play. Trying to guess the price of oil leaves me speechless despite the pathetically large number of hours I spend trying to understand the market. Yet, given the way 2022 is unfolding, I offer the following predictions as more…
Since 2020 Alberta chiropractors have been required to wear masks. Now one of them has had enough
Since last September, experts have testified at a tribunal hearing for an Alberta chiropractor on how well masks do, or don’t, slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Unfortunately, the chiropractor’s college, YouTube and LinkedIn didn’t want you to know what was said because most of it contradicts what people have been told…
There is a growing comfort in institutional journalism to follow rather than question
Warning lights should always flash before our eyes whenever journalists mix raw numbers and percolating percentages in the same paragraph. Numbers clearly state actuality. Percentages are the ups and downs of context. Regardless of the axiom attributed to Stalin that one death is a tragedy and a million is a statistic, if two people die,…
Aims to help people find credible information online
The problem with combatting the misinformation swirling around COVID-19 is, according to University of Alberta health law professor Timothy Caulfield, that all fronts the fight takes place on are of equal importance. “For a long time there has been this tolerance of pseudoscience and misinformation,” said Caulfield. “But there are recent studies that show once people believe…