Fake News: Fact & Fiction - Episode 6: How to be a critical thinker
BBC Learning English
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_2CwOpt0NY

Transkript (automatisch erstellt)

0:06 Hi, I'm Hugo. And I'm Sam.
0:08 And this is Fake News: Fact and Fiction from BBC Learning English. In the programme today
0:12 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
0:21 is now probably the most important skill any individual can have. Hear more from Dr Novella later.
0:28 First, Sam, do have some vocabulary for us? Yes I do.
0:31 So, today I'm going to be talking about: spin, cherry-picking, bias and the phrase 'critical thinking' itself. Let's have a look.
0:47 See that It's a ball.
0:51 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?
1:01 It's still there somewhere but difficult to see clearly. Spin makes the truth difficult to see.
1:09 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.
1:20 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.
1:31 They might highlight the most positive details but ignore the other details that don't make them look quite as good.
1:39 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.
1:49 And it's not just politicians, of all sides, who do this. It happens in the media too, mainstream and social media,
1:57 and very often we do it ourselves. To explain why, I'm going to need another ball,
2:03 like a bowling ball. Bowling balls don't roll straight.
2:09 They curve to the left or right when they're rolled. One reason for this is that their weight is not centred.
2:16 They have what is called a bias. Bias is the same word we use to describe an opinion that is not impartial.
2:26 One that is not based fairly on facts but which may turn one way or another because of personal feelings, political preferences or ideology.
2:37 So we might disagree with someone and think that they're wrong not because of evidence or facts
2:42 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
2:50 something called 'confirmation bias' is incredibly important. This is when we ignore or dismiss anything that doesn't support our own beliefs
3:00 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.
3:10 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.
3:20 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.
3:32 This is where critical thinking becomes very important. The skill of looking at information objectively and impartially
3:41 and trying not to be persuaded by our own biases. So that was my balanced spin on spin and now back to the studio.
3:52 Thanks Sam. I may be biased but I thought it was really interesting.
3:56 And it takes us nicely into our topic today. Critical thinking.
4:00 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
4:08 and if it's fake news, that can be a problem. Thinking critically is a bit like social distancing for fake news.
4:17 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
4:25 and not believe everything you read on the Internet. So what does it mean to be a sceptic?
4:30 Let's turn to our guest today Dr Steven Novella. Dr Novella is a clinical neurologist at Yale University.
4:38 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.
4:46 We spoke to him earlier and first asked him about what being sceptic means and why he believes it's important.
4:54 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.
5:03 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.
5:14 But you know we're advocating scientific scepticism, using a formal method, using a process to evaluate the information that we encounter.
5:25 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.
5:33 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;
5:40 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
5:49 or that's biased or that's inaccurate. And sometimes people just make honest mistakes.
5:53 We're flawed. Our brains are flawed, our memories are terrible. We sort of construct an approximation of reality as best we can but
5:59 it's never totally accurate. And we have to be aware of all those biases and flaws.
6:05 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?
6:13 Yeah, so the word 'gullible' is interesting. We use this word for someone who is willing to believe things without questioning.
6:22 It makes them really easy to trick. So, I remember when I was at school a teacher told me that the word gullible
6:29 wasn't in the dictionary. Did you believe them?
6:33 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
6:40 I thought it was interesting but I thought I should probably check it out first. And of course the word was in the dictionary.
6:48 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
6:59 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
7:08 is when thinking about the areas of science, health and politics. It does take a little bit of an effort.
7:15 It's easy to check a dictionary to see if a word is in there but it is more difficult with more complex issues.
7:22 So how do we start with this? Here's Dr Novella again.
7:26 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.
7:37 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
7:45 or whatever who are saying something, I want to at least understand what their point is, what is their side.
7:51 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.
8:00 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,
8:10 'Ok who has the better evidence'. And when you do that habitually, you do that all the time, you get pretty good at it,
8:17 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
8:24 have a fighting chance if you do that process. It seems to have some similarity with what journalists do,
8:30 looking for different sources and analysing the evidence. And it's important to look not only at different sources but also
8:39 at different points of view. Of course this isn't something you need to do for everything.
8:44 Some things are easy to check and some things are not that controversial. But when it comes to science, medicine and health, for example,
8:51 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
8:59 if you want to be a critical thinker. This is something that Dr Novella thinks is essential for students and adults to develop
9:06 but it's not the only thing. So here's a look at what else he thinks is important.
9:11 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.
9:20 I think media literacy is more important than it ever was. It's only going to get even more important so people need
9:27 to understand not just scientific literacy but critical thinking and media literacy. That is the currency now of the modern world.
9:36 We all have access to massive amounts of information. I mean it's unbelievable when you think about it,
9:41 at the touch of your fingers you have access to the collective knowledge of humanity. It's amazing.
9:49 And so the real currency is in being able to find the information that you want and evaluate it critically.
9:57 Being able to evaluate the information that we have access to critically is now probably the most important skill any individual can have.
10:04 And that's what now I think the science communicators are shifting towards.
10:10 That's what we have to teach people. They can find the facts online.
10:13 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?
10:23 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.
10:34 And it's also about being aware of where you get your information from, people on social media, blogs and websites you follow.
10:42 So, Sam, can you just please recap today's vocabulary for us. Absolutely.
10:46 So we started off with 'spin' which is a way to present information in a positive way, as positive as possible,
10:54 even if it's not actually particularly good news. Cherry-picking details is to choose only the information
11:02 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
11:12 on evidence but is based on prejudices or our own beliefs and our own ideology. Critical thinking is the skill of evaluating and judging
11:22 how accurate something is objectively, without bias, without spin, and without cherry picking data.
11:30 A sceptic is someone who wants to use logic and evidence and not emotion when judging how accurate something is.
11:39 The adjective 'gullible' is used for people who aren't sceptical, who easily believe what they're told and what they read.
11:47 And finally, media literacy is an awareness of our modern media environment and an understanding of how
11:54 media and social media works and how fake news and disinformation can spread.
12:00 Thank you very much Sam, I think you deserve a rest after that. And thank you for watching.
12:06 Until next time, goodbye. Bye.