6 Comments

This is an important piece. So well crafted, honest, and open. Useful. Gives me tools to work with. Written with clarity in a way that most academics not only don't appreciate but are trained not to appreciate. There is so much performance art in the academy that hiding behind ambiguity is seen as a virtue, not a sin. Ambiguity is seen as brilliance when most of it is really bullshit. I've read so many bad papers--especially in anthropology--that read like a random bad New Yorker poem. Beautiful words strung together into nothingness. As Josh knows, I write for the New York Times on occasion. While everyone makes mistakes, my editor is brilliant, and everything I write that he touches is much better for it. And, he never fails to send an army of fact-checkers my way. One time I wrote something like, "many of our rural farm-to-market roads are allowed to deteriorate to gravel for lack of investment," and a fact checker called my county engineer to check that what I was saying was true. Anyway, thanks for this piece. I'm better off having read it.

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Thanks, Bob. I agree about pretension. I am aware that the kind of thing I'm writing here does not allow for as deep a lit review as a work of scholarship might, and that writing for a popular audience often risks relying more on anecdotes than on truly diversified evidence. But, as you say, I don't miss the academic word salads. I'm glad to hear about the fact checkers, too.

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Great article (as usual). Helping students (and your own children) evaluate the truth and accuracy of their sources has plagued me for years - any tool to assist with this challenge is truly appreciated!

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“ And one can wonder, reasonably, how many news sources still identify watchdog reporting and truth telling as their top motivations.”

I think these days, they all believe they are truth telling.

I don’t read the New York Times either. I did in the 80’s and 90’s.

I actually don’t read anything that uses Twitter is a source. As soon as I have clicked the clickbait and see Twitter used as a source, gone.

I kind of like the tile guy’s reaction. It’s true, you just don’t know what to believe anymore. When was the last time you read an accurate weather report?

I hope I got my “jots and tittles“ correct. Had to look that up by the way.

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The jots and tittles look good! I do read the NY Times, but I'm often aware of what it leaves out, which is part of the reliability question. I'm sympathetic to my contractor's reaction, as well, since he doesn't have much time to vet information -- he's busy building homes and renovating other homes -- but is everything really so untrustworthy that we can't believe reporting about a public health crisis as big as Flint? I think it's dangerous to draw that conclusion, because then even the biggest atrocities can't be believed (Holocaust denial isn't a terribly big step from there), and that is the perfect playground for an autocrat.

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WoW! Is so funny sipi!!!!

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