Opinions supported by provable facts is what distinguish a scientific dissertation compared to a political statement. Politicians do not generally support their opinions with provable facts, and while they can consult with scientists to form opinions or support a political statement, this seems more of the exception than the rule.
In social science, defining provable facts is also a major problem since very few publications can be replicated. In fact, most provable facts in social science is estimated to be provable false, a fact found by meta studies a while back. A common finding is that the further one goes from pure math, the worse the provable facts become with social science sitting furthers away in the spectrum.
Thus I often see a different and more strict definition of "fake news". Fake news is only when an opinion has been been made with the intention of misleading for political gain, with strong emphasis on the intention aspect. It thus becomes very close to the definition of propaganda, but with additional restrictions. Intentions are also very hard to prove, especially with provable facts.
Do you happen to know where the meta study on this is from? I know of one paper that puts the blame on biomedical research[0], but it makes intuitive sense for the same to apply to social science.
The initial key word I would start with if someone is interested in studying this concept would be "replication crisis". Wikipedia has a good starting off point with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
I would not point to a specific study. Primarily because I would have to dig through a rather long list to find the one that I found "best", but also because in terms of fact finding, its better if people did this independently. "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" is a good one however.
> A common finding is that the further one goes from pure math, the worse the provable facts become with social science sitting furthers away in the spectrum.
I think this is true, but it's not because of the distance from pure math. It's a choice made by researchers and journals regarding the standard of evidence required.
Physics demands very strong evidence for publication, a p-value of 5-sigma or more, less than a 1 in a million chance of getting a publishable result from a random experiment.
Social science is typically satisfied with a p-value of 0.05, a 1 in 20 chance of getting a publishable result from a random experiment. That means a whole lot of results are published that are nothing more than the scientific equivalent of dice rolling snake-eyes.
In fact, rolling snake-eyes is less likely (1/36) than getting a publishable result from any given social science experiment (1/20).
Fortunately, this also means it's an easy problem to solve, if the will existed. Simply requiring a much higher standard of proof would filter out a lot of the false social science results.
Fake news consist of blatantly false facts and conspiracy theories. The NEWS bit is there because these stories are suggesting something specific happened or was revealed. If it says ‘Ukraine invaded Russia,’ that’s fake news. More often it’s conspiracy crap like “Deep state behind X!”
It’s not so ambitious because it’s dificult to completely avoid facts. Political discourse regularly refers to actual facts ‘Russia invaded Ukraine’ is the kind of thing you can fact check and it passes.
Politics also uses facts in misleading ways. The kind of things where Fact Check goes: “Trump wrongly said the judge wouldn’t allow an “advice of counsel” defense. Before the trial, Trump’s attorneys chose not to seek such a defense, and Merchan held them to that decision.” aren’t what most people refer to as Fake News. From a certain point of view ‘Darth Vader killed your father’ and Social Security may tax income but it’s not income tax because we have a tax called Income Tax yadda yadda.
If we look at the claim that "ukrain invaded russia", we can lable that as war propaganda with a pretty clear intent, especially if we can source the claim to Russian military or government. The facts such as which specific solder fired the first bullet, at what gps location, using what gun, are all facts too but not important for determining false news. War propaganda is enough to be determined by intent. Actually facts are more a hindrence than helpful, since they add noise to something that should be simple.
In addition, most of us a were not there so the determining factor rest on trust. Do we trust russia, or the multiple sources that said russia invaded Ukrain. We do not need the independent quality of a math proof to determine a case like that.
Outlawing war propaganda is way older than censorship of fake news, and have pro and cons are different than those around fake news.
Was the idea that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan fake news? Is the idea that the vaccines may have side effects worth understanding fake news?
That is what was defined as fake news and actively censored in our very recent past.
The problem with censoring fake news is that ultimately someone has to decide what is real and what is fake, and once censored, it becomes very difficult to discuss and revise that decision.
Making specific claims without evidence is Fake News because you’re saying you have evidence that X is true when you don’t.
“COVID-19 COULD have leaked from a lab” is perfectly fine. Saying “COVID-19 leaked from a lab” requires evidence or it’s not news even though you claim it is thus the label “Fake” news.
I agree with your premise here, but both of these topics were censored to the point of removing accounts that discussed them under the assumption that they were fake news. This is the problem with censoring anything.
I’ve rarely seen people bring up racism when talking about the lab leak idea in general.
Distrust of the CCP doesn’t link to racism in most western eyes because they don’t differentiate between different Asian groups as distinct races. Race is basically just White, Hispanic, Black, Asian, Native American, and maybe Pacific Islanders.
That is a separate topic but recent congressional hearings would be a great way to research. The point that I am making is that both of these topics were censored as fake news, and neither is probably false.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
Excerpt:
"Some say the virus came from nature that, according to recent papers discussed in New York Times, the science is dispositive. Some say it’s too unique, too primed for human transmission, that there’s too much circumstantial evidence that points to COVID–19 coming from a lab. As well, in three years, there’s been no track found to prove that COVID–19 evolved naturally from an animal or a mammal or a tick to become highly infectious to humans. The truth is we don’t know the origins of COVID–19 yet for sure. We don’t have a smoking gun.
First, the science behind COVID–19: the genome of COVID–19 is inconsistent with expectations, and is unique for its group of viruses. COVID–19 has both a binding domain optimized for human cells, and a furin cleavage site, or a small part of the virus that makes it so infectious. That has never been seen before in a SARS-related virus. In other words, COVID–19 has unique characteristics that made it very infectious to humans. These have never been seen before in any other viruses of its type.
Most viral outbreaks are slow and small. CDC data shows SARS infected approximately 8,000 people worldwide, and eight in the U.S. Similar with MERS, which infected approximately 2,000 people worldwide. But COVID–19 was primed for human transmission. It has infected more than 750 million people worldwide. Dr. Redfield, one of our witnesses here today and a virologist, has even said that he believes COVID–19 had a detour from nature to be educated how to infect humans.
Second, the known research occurring in China: We know the Wuhan Institute of Virology was conducting gain-of-function research on novel bat coronaviruses by creating chimeric viruses, combining two viruses together to test infectivity and infecting mice with these viruses, work that former COVID–19 task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx confirmed was, in fact, gain-of-function, contrary to statements by Dr. Fauci. We have learned that the Wuhan Institute has poor biosafety and was conducting this research at only Biosafety Level 2, described as the ‘‘Wild West’’ by Dr. Jeremy Farrar, a virologist from the U.K., now Chief Scientist for the WHO.
We have learned through a leaked DARPA grant application that with U.S. taxpayer backing, the Wuhan Institute proposed inserting furin cleavage sites into novel coronaviruses, the same unique genetic aspect of COVID–19. And we know, according to a State Department fact sheet, the multiple researchers at the Wuhan Institute were sick with COVID–19-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, before the Chinese officially announced the outbreak.
Third, concerning the actions of NIH and EcoHealth Alliance, records show that the National Institutes of Health while the U.S. was under a moratorium on gain-of-function research, exempted EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute from this very ban. Records show that the National Institutes of Health allowed EcoHealth to conduct risky research on novel coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute without going through the potential pandemic pathogen department level review board.
Records show that EcoHealth violated Federal grant policy, and failed to file its five-year progress report for more than two years.
Records show that EcoHealth violated the terms of its grant and failed to report an experiment that resulted in gain-of-function of a coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute.
Fourth, for some reason that we do not yet know, leaders in the scientific community took action to attempt to convince the world that they should not take the lab leak theory seriously. Dr. Francis Collins stated he was more concerned with harm to ‘‘international harmony’’ than he was with investigating the lab leak. Dr. Fauci said the lab leak theory was a ‘‘shiny object that will go away in time.’’
The president of EcoHealth, Dr. Peter Daszak orchestrated a letter in The Lancet that called the lab leak a ‘‘conspiracy theory,’’ a statement that directly benefited Dr. Daszak himself. And four scientists, after a conference call with Dr. Fauci, completely reversed their position. Dr. Kristian Andersen said he found ‘‘the genome inconsistent with evolutionary theory.’’ And Dr. Robert Garry said he ‘‘really can’t think of a possible natural scenario.’’ But a few days later, published a paper saying the exact opposite, a paper based on the new emails we released claim to be prompted by Dr. Fauci himself.
Fifth, the intelligence: FBI Director, Christopher Wray, confirmed publicly that the FBI assessed COVID–19 most likely originated from a lab incident in Wuhan. The Wall Street Journal reported the Department of Energy now also believes a lab leak is the most likely origin. These aren’t run-of-the-mill agencies. The FBI used experts in biological threats and is reportedly supported by the National Bioforensic Analysis Center and the Department of Energy used its own Z Division, experts in investigating biological threats. These are some of the facts as we know them, but there’s so much more to do."
- Hon. Brad R. Wenstrup (chairman of the subcommittee)
Here's an info dump on the subject from Swiss Policy Research, a website described by Wikipedia as "a website that has been criticized for spreading conspiracy theories":
I'm not presenting this as anything other than a source of information, whether true or not. The site clearly has an agenda, but information is information. The statements there should serve as a jumping-off point for further investigation.
On that note, it looks like Google's algorithm is still boosting official sources on the subject, and is conceivably deboosting sources it deems to be unreliable (I'm not sure if it's controversial to state that online censorship was rampant during the pandemic), so the search for information may be deceptively difficult. You may have better luck with alternative search engines.
I doubt if many people (especially now) dispute it could have been manmade. The point was that one party that shall remain nameless was saying 100% that it was a Chinese conspiracy to create a biological weapon and it either leaked or was released intentionally. It was stated as a fact; not as a theory or as possibility but a verified fact, and it was and still is not. Fauci and others felt, given what they knew at the time it was likely natural in origin, and we’ve had similar in the past, in particular Spanish Flu. The “Chi-na” theory was sold hand in hand with the “5G deep state poison” vaccine theories and that’s why most people wanted that stuff off social media. And that was okay, because SM is owned by private entities and in the USA you are allowed to control what is on your platform (at least for now). I was on team wait-and-see where the evidence leads, but I’ve never been worried about vaccines or the FDA process for it. I was never for forced injections either by government or corporate mandates. I’m not sure why people are so ready to jump to extremes rather than see where evidence leads, I have a deep suspicion of anyone who serves up “facts” before there is any evidence.
In social science, defining provable facts is also a major problem since very few publications can be replicated. In fact, most provable facts in social science is estimated to be provable false, a fact found by meta studies a while back. A common finding is that the further one goes from pure math, the worse the provable facts become with social science sitting furthers away in the spectrum.
Thus I often see a different and more strict definition of "fake news". Fake news is only when an opinion has been been made with the intention of misleading for political gain, with strong emphasis on the intention aspect. It thus becomes very close to the definition of propaganda, but with additional restrictions. Intentions are also very hard to prove, especially with provable facts.