unSpun_ Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation - Brooks Jackson [79]
Respect for Facts
We’re not surprised that advertisers and politicians try to deceive us. Who can blame them for fabricating, twisting, exaggerating, or distorting the facts when we customers and citizens reward them so regularly with our money and votes? We should know that products like “Exercise in a Bottle” or Internet-advertised Hoodia won’t make fat melt away without effort on our part. We even joke about how untrustworthy politicians are when they seek our votes. And yet enough people buy the products and the candidates to make all the spinning pay off.
These hucksters and partisans may not even realize how badly they are misleading us. Quite often, they seem to believe their own spin, even when a bit of rudimentary factchecking shows it to be distorted or false. Remember the “your brain on politics” scans? In true believers, the portions of the brain used in rational thought just didn’t light up. But from the consumer’s standpoint—or the voter’s—it doesn’t matter whether the deception and spinning are deliberate. Either way, getting the facts wrong can cause us to waste six bucks on a cold remedy that may not work, or cause us to cheer for a war that doesn’t look like such a good idea once we find out our leaders got the basic facts wrong.
So what can we do? Certainly an ordinary citizen can’t be expected to outguess the CIA about the secret military capabilities of foreign nations. And maybe it’s no big tragedy if we overpay for beauty products that don’t really make wrinkles disappear. Indeed, maybe just thinking that wrinkles are gone is worth the money to some, and they might not mind being deceived. But generally, we’re better off getting facts right, and we should try to get them right as consistently as we can.
Our advice boils down to two words: respect facts.
You’ll be money ahead, for one thing. A little factchecking is often all it takes to expose the advertising hype of an emu-oil saleswoman, a “clinically proven” cold remedy that isn’t really proven, or an ex-con selling a book about cancer cures on late-night infomercials.
You’ll save yourself time and annoyance if you develop the habits of mind we have recommended here. Respect for facts means keeping your mind engaged, so you won’t fall for the next psychology student who cuts in line at the copy machine with a nonreason like “I have to make some copies,” or for the many other nonreasons and the bogus logic that we’re confronted with every day. Respect for facts also means checking your own assumptions. You could live years longer if you are a woman who respects the facts about what most women really die of, and then follows the medical advice that reduces those risks. You could avoid dying young if you are a teenager who respects the fact that teen drivers are four times more likely than older drivers to crash. Most teens don’t; they tend to rate their own skills higher than those of their peers.
When it comes to politics, you can have the satisfaction of knowing you chose your candidate on the basis of facts, not just TV-spot fantasies. It might not change the way you vote, but then again, it might. Either way, you can be more confident you’ve made the right choice.
A greater respect for facts among our leaders could well have avoided a protracted and bloody war in Iraq. CIA officials failed to practice active open-mindedness, while the president and his top advisers pushed for evidence that would confirm their assumptions, not for evidence that might disprove them and show war to be unnecessary. The opposition showed little respect for facts as well: only half a dozen senators and a handful of House members even bothered to read the full National Intelligence Estimate prior to voting to authorize force. The New York Times apologized in 2004 for failing to report more skeptically in the months before the war.
We don’t expect that