ajqtrz
Chef - loquacious Old Dog
Long Read, Don't read if you can't concentrate long enough to actually read all of it, please. Don't waste your time. Thanks! -- AJ
In the very old black and white series, “Dragnet” Sargent Friday, upon interviewing witnesses, seldom minced words. If a witness was speaking about the character of the person or some other opinion he would cut her off and admonish her with “just the fax, Mam.” Sargent Friday didn’t want opinions, he wanted facts. Just the facts.
Now that we have all kinds of “fact checking” going on I thought it might be a good thing to review what is a fact and what is not. And once we do that we will find that there are very, very few fact checking sites. In fact, I haven’t found one!
So what’s a fact? If I say there are thirteen ducks swimming in the pond that may or may not be a fact. If there are fewer or more than thirteen, well then my claim is not factual. It is false. But before I can label the claim as "false" I have to be sure I understand the claim. There are, therefore, a number of things I must consider.
First, since the number of ducks swimming can change from one moment to another, there is an implied date and time to the claim. I must consider that. “There are [right not] thirteen ducks swimming in the pond” is the claim. In addition, the ducks cannot be doing nothing in the pond, they must be swimming. Duck don’t have to swim and thus, at the moment of the claim there might be thirteen ducks in the pond, but not all thirteen are swimming. Or there might be five hundred ducks in the pond but only thirteen are swimming. The strict interpretation of the claim is what is being verified and is, in fact, the only thing that can be verified when it comes to a factual statement.
Second, the fact may include an imprecise measure. “About,” may mean ten ducks or it may be sixteen. Thus, if I say “there are about thirteen ducks swimming in the pond” there is some expectation that the number of ducks be “about” thirteen. How much that can vary is, itself, imprecise.
Third, the word “swimming” may, itself, be difficult to nail down. A duck is moving across the pond. Is it moving due to currents, is it actually swimming, or is it being blown by the wind? Or did the one making the claim mean a sort of general “swimming” as you might say “I went swimming” when you went to the beach even if you never entered the water? In other words, is the word “swimming” a metonym for “being in the water” or a literal thing?
In the end then, the verification of the statement can only be done if you have the same definitions of the various words and how they are being used. Once you get that you can then look, count, and measure if the statement “There are thirteen ducks swimming in the pond” is true or false. But what you can’t do is declare the statement to be “mostly false,” “somewhat false,” “neither true or false,” “somewhat true,” or “mostly true.” And the only way to know if the statement: “There are thirteen ducks swimming in the pond” is true is to stand at the pond and count the swimming ducks with the same definition of “swimming” and “duck” and “pond” as the person making the statement. And if he or she thinks “about” means plus or minus five, you can suggest you think the range too wide, but since he or she is making the claim his or her definition of what constitutes “about” must be used.
Those are the parameters of fact checking. A fact check is a verification of a concrete thing you can do if you are standing in the place where the one making the claim is standing. Or you can reference somebody who is standing in that place and who supports or disputes the claim. “I only counted four ducks, that were swimming” would be a counter claim. What you can’t do, and what is often done in the name of “fact checking” is to call up somebody who is in no position to have verified (i.e. have counted) the ducks. So the county worker coming to work on Monday morning has nothing to say about how many ducks were swimming in the pond the night before. He or she may be in the position of saying, “There are usually only a couple ducks on the pond” but that is a different fact, not a correction of the original claim. A claim which, itself, is subject to verification. Yet, this is what, too often, passes as fact checking. “Senator Smith says he's never seen thirteen ducks swimming in the pond” means nothing unless Senator Smith was at the pond the night before, even if he is Chairman of the Senate Ducks and Ponds Comittee.” He can say, if he believes it to be true, “I don’t believe there were thirteen ducks swimming in the pond,” but if he does one ought to ask WHY he doesn’t believe it. If asked he may have good reasons or not. He may say, “well according to the park worker he’s never seen more than two ducks swimming in the pond so it’s highly unlikely there were thirteen.” But of course that’s not refuting, that simply expressing doubt and offering a reason for that doubt. If he really wanted to prove the fact false he could, if it were true, point out that the pond was drained two weeks ago and has no water in it! Since it’s impossible for ducks to swim without water, he could deny the fact. But it’s up to him to make the case. Sadly, most fact checking is of the type that says, "of course it's not a fact because so and so says it's not a fact and so and so is in a position that matters." The one position that so and so isn't in is the position to count the ducks but the "fact checker" is simply substituting the Senators opinion for actual checking. It's lazy journalism but sadly, very, very common.
That every “fact checking” place I’ve surveyed has a scale running from false to true, with various graduations in between, tells me they aren’t checking facts at all. And that is, in my opinion, very, very sad. They really ought to get all their ducks in a row so we can count on them.
AJ
In the very old black and white series, “Dragnet” Sargent Friday, upon interviewing witnesses, seldom minced words. If a witness was speaking about the character of the person or some other opinion he would cut her off and admonish her with “just the fax, Mam.” Sargent Friday didn’t want opinions, he wanted facts. Just the facts.
Now that we have all kinds of “fact checking” going on I thought it might be a good thing to review what is a fact and what is not. And once we do that we will find that there are very, very few fact checking sites. In fact, I haven’t found one!
So what’s a fact? If I say there are thirteen ducks swimming in the pond that may or may not be a fact. If there are fewer or more than thirteen, well then my claim is not factual. It is false. But before I can label the claim as "false" I have to be sure I understand the claim. There are, therefore, a number of things I must consider.
First, since the number of ducks swimming can change from one moment to another, there is an implied date and time to the claim. I must consider that. “There are [right not] thirteen ducks swimming in the pond” is the claim. In addition, the ducks cannot be doing nothing in the pond, they must be swimming. Duck don’t have to swim and thus, at the moment of the claim there might be thirteen ducks in the pond, but not all thirteen are swimming. Or there might be five hundred ducks in the pond but only thirteen are swimming. The strict interpretation of the claim is what is being verified and is, in fact, the only thing that can be verified when it comes to a factual statement.
Second, the fact may include an imprecise measure. “About,” may mean ten ducks or it may be sixteen. Thus, if I say “there are about thirteen ducks swimming in the pond” there is some expectation that the number of ducks be “about” thirteen. How much that can vary is, itself, imprecise.
Third, the word “swimming” may, itself, be difficult to nail down. A duck is moving across the pond. Is it moving due to currents, is it actually swimming, or is it being blown by the wind? Or did the one making the claim mean a sort of general “swimming” as you might say “I went swimming” when you went to the beach even if you never entered the water? In other words, is the word “swimming” a metonym for “being in the water” or a literal thing?
In the end then, the verification of the statement can only be done if you have the same definitions of the various words and how they are being used. Once you get that you can then look, count, and measure if the statement “There are thirteen ducks swimming in the pond” is true or false. But what you can’t do is declare the statement to be “mostly false,” “somewhat false,” “neither true or false,” “somewhat true,” or “mostly true.” And the only way to know if the statement: “There are thirteen ducks swimming in the pond” is true is to stand at the pond and count the swimming ducks with the same definition of “swimming” and “duck” and “pond” as the person making the statement. And if he or she thinks “about” means plus or minus five, you can suggest you think the range too wide, but since he or she is making the claim his or her definition of what constitutes “about” must be used.
Those are the parameters of fact checking. A fact check is a verification of a concrete thing you can do if you are standing in the place where the one making the claim is standing. Or you can reference somebody who is standing in that place and who supports or disputes the claim. “I only counted four ducks, that were swimming” would be a counter claim. What you can’t do, and what is often done in the name of “fact checking” is to call up somebody who is in no position to have verified (i.e. have counted) the ducks. So the county worker coming to work on Monday morning has nothing to say about how many ducks were swimming in the pond the night before. He or she may be in the position of saying, “There are usually only a couple ducks on the pond” but that is a different fact, not a correction of the original claim. A claim which, itself, is subject to verification. Yet, this is what, too often, passes as fact checking. “Senator Smith says he's never seen thirteen ducks swimming in the pond” means nothing unless Senator Smith was at the pond the night before, even if he is Chairman of the Senate Ducks and Ponds Comittee.” He can say, if he believes it to be true, “I don’t believe there were thirteen ducks swimming in the pond,” but if he does one ought to ask WHY he doesn’t believe it. If asked he may have good reasons or not. He may say, “well according to the park worker he’s never seen more than two ducks swimming in the pond so it’s highly unlikely there were thirteen.” But of course that’s not refuting, that simply expressing doubt and offering a reason for that doubt. If he really wanted to prove the fact false he could, if it were true, point out that the pond was drained two weeks ago and has no water in it! Since it’s impossible for ducks to swim without water, he could deny the fact. But it’s up to him to make the case. Sadly, most fact checking is of the type that says, "of course it's not a fact because so and so says it's not a fact and so and so is in a position that matters." The one position that so and so isn't in is the position to count the ducks but the "fact checker" is simply substituting the Senators opinion for actual checking. It's lazy journalism but sadly, very, very common.
That every “fact checking” place I’ve surveyed has a scale running from false to true, with various graduations in between, tells me they aren’t checking facts at all. And that is, in my opinion, very, very sad. They really ought to get all their ducks in a row so we can count on them.
AJ