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Fake News: Fact & Fiction - Episode 6: How to be a critical thinker
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- Hi, I'm Hugo. And I'm Sam.
- And this is Fake News: Fact and Fiction from BBC Learning English. In the programme today
- we look at the topic of critical thinking with our special guest Dr Steven Novella. Being able to evaluate the information that we have access to critically
- is now probably the most important skill any individual can have. Hear more from Dr Novella later.
- First, Sam, do have some vocabulary for us? Yes I do.
- So, today I'm going to be talking about: spin, cherry-picking, bias and the phrase 'critical thinking' itself. Let's have a look.
- See that It's a ball.
- To turn it quickly is to spin it. Now if we put the truth on this ball then spin it, can you still see the truth?
- It's still there somewhere but difficult to see clearly. Spin makes the truth difficult to see.
- And this is a bit like political spin, a term first used in the 1970s to talk about the way politicians and their spokespeople present information.
- They will present information in a way that makes things seem as positive as possible without always telling you the whole truth or the whole context.
- They might highlight the most positive details but ignore the other details that don't make them look quite as good.
- Selecting which facts are chosen to publicise is known as 'cherry-picking' and it often doesn't give a full or accurate picture of the whole story.
- And it's not just politicians, of all sides, who do this. It happens in the media too, mainstream and social media,
- and very often we do it ourselves. To explain why, I'm going to need another ball,
- like a bowling ball. Bowling balls don't roll straight.
- They curve to the left or right when they're rolled. One reason for this is that their weight is not centred.
- They have what is called a bias. Bias is the same word we use to describe an opinion that is not impartial.
- One that is not based fairly on facts but which may turn one way or another because of personal feelings, political preferences or ideology.
- So we might disagree with someone and think that they're wrong not because of evidence or facts
- but just because they have a different way of looking at the world than we do. And when it comes to the spread of fake news
- something called 'confirmation bias' is incredibly important. This is when we ignore or dismiss anything that doesn't support our own beliefs
- and only pay attention to information that confirms the views we already have. We like to read and see opinions that reflect our own beliefs.
- We might want to share something that we really agree with, something that makes us really angry or upset and not stop to think whether it's actually true.
- The challenge is to be open to trying to understand opinions that are different from our own and not ignore any evidence that doesn't confirm our own view.
- This is where critical thinking becomes very important. The skill of looking at information objectively and impartially
- and trying not to be persuaded by our own biases. So that was my balanced spin on spin and now back to the studio.
- Thanks Sam. I may be biased but I thought it was really interesting.
- And it takes us nicely into our topic today. Critical thinking.
- Why is this something that is important when it comes to fake news? Yeah well one of the ways that news spreads is when it's shared
- and if it's fake news, that can be a problem. Thinking critically is a bit like social distancing for fake news.
- If we know how to spot fake news, we are less likely to spread it. And in order to spot fake news you have to be a little bit of a sceptic
- and not believe everything you read on the Internet. So what does it mean to be a sceptic?
- Let's turn to our guest today Dr Steven Novella. Dr Novella is a clinical neurologist at Yale University.
- He's a science communicator who presents a weekly podcast called "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe" and he's also written a book with the same name.
- We spoke to him earlier and first asked him about what being sceptic means and why he believes it's important.
- A sceptic is somebody that wants to believe only things that are actually true. We want to use facts logic and evidence to base our beliefs on.
- Now the opposite of being a sceptic is being gullible and I don't think anybody would want, would self-identify as gullible or want to be gullible.
- But you know we're advocating scientific scepticism, using a formal method, using a process to evaluate the information that we encounter.
- We're deluged with information, we have to filter it somehow. We have to figure, have some way of figuring out what's likely to be true and what's not true.
- If someone's trying to deceive me; if someone is trying to sell me something; if someone else has been deceived and they're trying to pass that along to me;
- if the government is trying to maintain some fiction to maintain control. I mean it's all sorts of reasons why people would give me information that's not correct
- or that's biased or that's inaccurate. And sometimes people just make honest mistakes.
- We're flawed. Our brains are flawed, our memories are terrible. We sort of construct an approximation of reality as best we can but
- it's never totally accurate. And we have to be aware of all those biases and flaws.
- Well good to hear Dr Novella using one of your vocabulary words there, Sam, bias. But did you pick out any other interesting words there?
- Yeah, so the word 'gullible' is interesting. We use this word for someone who is willing to believe things without questioning.
- It makes them really easy to trick. So, I remember when I was at school a teacher told me that the word gullible
- wasn't in the dictionary. Did you believe them?
- Well I thought about it for a second because it was a teacher who told me and I trusted them and then I was going to tell my friends because
- I thought it was interesting but I thought I should probably check it out first. And of course the word was in the dictionary.
- So being a sceptic and a critical thinker means not believing everything you see or hear, not liking and sharing somethingeven if we agree with it
- or it feels right to us until we have evidence to support it. It may not be important whether a word is a dictionary or not but it
- is when thinking about the areas of science, health and politics. It does take a little bit of an effort.
- It's easy to check a dictionary to see if a word is in there but it is more difficult with more complex issues.
- So how do we start with this? Here's Dr Novella again.
- So whenever I come across a question or a topic that I want to wrap my head around, I make sure that I look for, specifically look for information on all sides.
- There may be more than two sides but all what I think are at least viable opinions. If there is any large group of people or respected professionals
- or whatever who are saying something, I want to at least understand what their point is, what is their side.
- And until you sort of sort through the back and forth of different arguments, you don't really have a good sense of who has the better position.
- And if I follow a good process, I look for as many differing opinions as I can, keep a genuinely open mind, don't prejudge the conclusion and then see,
- 'Ok who has the better evidence'. And when you do that habitually, you do that all the time, you get pretty good at it,
- just like anything, you do it all the time and you'll get better at it. It still takes work to wrap your head around any complex issue but you
- have a fighting chance if you do that process. It seems to have some similarity with what journalists do,
- looking for different sources and analysing the evidence. And it's important to look not only at different sources but also
- at different points of view. Of course this isn't something you need to do for everything.
- Some things are easy to check and some things are not that controversial. But when it comes to science, medicine and health, for example,
- there are many claims that we might like to believe but which may not be accurate. So it's a good idea to develop some of those research skills
- if you want to be a critical thinker. This is something that Dr Novella thinks is essential for students and adults to develop
- but it's not the only thing. So here's a look at what else he thinks is important.
- I do think that we need to teach critical thinking as a core skill set to all, all children and adults and what's called media literacy.
- I think media literacy is more important than it ever was. It's only going to get even more important so people need
- to understand not just scientific literacy but critical thinking and media literacy. That is the currency now of the modern world.
- We all have access to massive amounts of information. I mean it's unbelievable when you think about it,
- at the touch of your fingers you have access to the collective knowledge of humanity. It's amazing.
- And so the real currency is in being able to find the information that you want and evaluate it critically.
- Being able to evaluate the information that we have access to critically is now probably the most important skill any individual can have.
- And that's what now I think the science communicators are shifting towards.
- That's what we have to teach people. They can find the facts online.
- We need to teach them how to know it when they find it. So, Sam, as well as critical thinking, what else does Dr Novella think is an essential skill?
- That would be 'media literacy' which is an understanding of how the media and social media works and how it's being used for good and for bad.
- And it's also about being aware of where you get your information from, people on social media, blogs and websites you follow.
- So, Sam, can you just please recap today's vocabulary for us. Absolutely.
- So we started off with 'spin' which is a way to present information in a positive way, as positive as possible,
- even if it's not actually particularly good news. Cherry-picking details is to choose only the information
- that agrees with your views and ignore any inconvenient facts. A bias is a belief that something is good or bad which isn't based
- on evidence but is based on prejudices or our own beliefs and our own ideology. Critical thinking is the skill of evaluating and judging
- how accurate something is objectively, without bias, without spin, and without cherry picking data.
- A sceptic is someone who wants to use logic and evidence and not emotion when judging how accurate something is.
- The adjective 'gullible' is used for people who aren't sceptical, who easily believe what they're told and what they read.
- And finally, media literacy is an awareness of our modern media environment and an understanding of how
- media and social media works and how fake news and disinformation can spread.
- Thank you very much Sam, I think you deserve a rest after that. And thank you for watching.
- Until next time, goodbye. Bye.
Zum Nachlesen
Fake NewsFake News (auch Fakenews; englisch fake news [ˈfɛɪ̯kˌnjuːz]) ist ein Anglizismus und bezeichnet absichtlich falsche oder irreführende Informationen, …
PodcastAls Podcast wird ein Medienformat bezeichnet, bei dem es sich meist um eine Serie abonnierbarer Audiodateien, seltener Videodateien, im Internet handelt.