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Great article discussing experts, their role in democracy, and some of the problems facing expertise. "Part of the problem is that some people think they're experts when in fact they're not. We've all been trapped at a party where one of the least informed people in the room holds court, confidently lecturing the other guests with a cascade of banalities and misinformation. This sort of experience isn't just in your imagination. It's real, and it's called "the Dunning-Kruger effect," after the research psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger. The essence of the effect is that the less skilled or competent you are, the more confident you are that you're actually very good at what you do. The psychologists' central finding: "Not only do [such people] reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it." We are moving toward a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople."

Nothing but the truth: Are we really living in a post-truth world? It has been an extraordinary year for the concept of veracity. Brexit. Trump. Experts have taken a beating, facts have apparently taken second place to emotion and feeling. And what about truth? It seems like fewer and fewer people, whether voters or politicians, care what's true anymore. Step forward the Oxford English Dictionary's word of 2016: "post-truth". Is this just shorthand to help liberals make sense of a world they don't like? Or does it mark something more meaningful? Are we really no longer interested in truth or is our toxic political climate clouding our ability to agree on what the facts are? In a series of special programmes as 2017 begins, Radio 4 examines inflection points in the world around us. In the first programme, Jo Fidgen explores how our brains process facts when they become polluted by politics. Producer: Gemma Newby

Ocean acidification is an inevitable consequence of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That's a matter of fact. We don't know exactly what will happen to complex marine ecosystems when faced with the additional stress of falling pH, but we do know those changes are happening and that they won't be good news.Freedom of speech, and of the press, is, of course, precious. Yet that freedom also brings responsibility. The Editors' Code of Practice - which IPSO says it upholds - requires the "highest professional standards". This includes taking care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text. In addition, a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where appropriate - an apology published.Is this just an honest opinion, a statement of fact or wilfully misleading and clever rhetoric? That depends on what is meant by "evidence". If it means quality research carried out by scientists with expertise in the field, the statement is factually incorrect. But if evidence includes anything said by non-experts, such as Delingpole, then that's an increase, right?

'Significance' is a magazine published by the UK Royal Statistical Society and American Statistical Association. E.g. this article discusses the data we might use to analyse food security, thinking about what sources of data are available and the questions they might help us answer. "data on food insecurity is biased towards the environment in which it was created and the priorities of those who collect or commission it. Data from schools is concerned with reimbursement; government data might be focused on budgetary constraints or accountability; grocery stores could (if willing) tell us what food is bought, but not how it is used; meanwhile, non-profits are most interested in demonstrating impact to funders. There is a wide variety of data sets available, but very few are created with the intent to understand the real drivers of hunger and poverty. The data may be repurposed, but modellers must be especially careful to moderate the assumptions of each data set. ...... It is also especially important that those experiencing hunger and poverty are consulted when designing any data analysis project. The input of domain experts is crucial to the success of data science endeavours, and those experiencing poverty know the right questions to ask."

Dismissing people's worries as baseless, whether that's about the safety of mobile phones or fluoridated drinking water, is one of the least effective ways of communicating public health risks. Yet it is common for people to "reassure" like this, both at home and in professional roles as experts, officials or corporate managers. 1. Hose down your own outrage first 2. Respect people's fears 3. Build trust 4. Don't panic about panic 5. Your actions communicate more than your words 6. Play the long game

There's now a vast network of factcheck units around the world, operating in myriad different languages. However, none have a process quite like ours at The Conversation. We have created an animated 72-second explainer of exactly how our FactCheck process works. It explains how we build in extra checks and balances, such as a blind peer review by a second academic expert and additional checking processes and editorial oversight. We hope you'll share it with others who care about reliable information.

What is the best way of reporting on data related to the environment? Where do you find the data in the first place? How do you make it relatable to the public and which challenges do you face along the way? Last October, seven experts got together on the Data Journalism Awards Slack team on to tackle these questions.

ASCO's news release about the screening study laments the "unfortunate" low rate of lung cancer screening and calls for an awareness campaign to encourage more smokers to get screened. Missing is discussion of legitimate reasons smokers might have to decline screening including substantial harms and a modest benefit. Following ASCO's lead, Bloomberg and HealthDay both echoed dramatic language about the finding without providing any perspective from independent experts who might voice reservations about screening.

As students from privileged backgrounds flock to schools that were supposed to be the ultimate symbol of egalitarianism, experts fear they may be reinforcing class and cultural divisions

Last week, the American Cancer Society published new guidelines that call for colorectal cancer screening to begin at age 45 - five years earlier than the group had previously recommended. But some experts are saying not so fast. The new recommendation was made in reaction to increasing rates of colorectal cancer among people younger than 50. But while the rise in cancers among this younger age group is troubling, this new recommendation was made before we know what's behind the new trend. And it's not clear that screening can help.It makes intuitive sense to respond to increasing rates of colon cancer among young people by lowering the screening age, said Michael Hochman, director of the the Gehr Family Center for Health Systems Science at the Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles. "But if I had a quarter for every time in medicine that we were tricked by an idea with intuitive appeal, I'd be a rich man," Hochman said.

how could two groups of 'experts' come up with such different conclusions, given they broadly agree of the evidence? David Aaronovitch in the Times identified the critical underlying issue behind the ensuing conflict: whether we take an individual- or a population-based approach. Essentially, the authors point out that any absolute risks are small from an individual perspective, and may generally be cancelled out by the enjoyment of eating, and the bother of changing habits. But these small benefits can be important from a public-health, population-wide perspective, since a lot of people making a small change, that only reduces their risk by a personally-negligible amount, can add up to thousands fewer cases of disease. That's what has generated the disagreement. It can be perfectly reasonable for guidance to be given by authorities, and it can also be perfectly reasonable for individuals to ignore it. Both can be 'right'.

Our entire education system is faulty, claim experts. They worry that schools don't prepare kids for the world outside. But how could anyone prove what the future will be like? We set off on a round-the-world sleuthing trip to trace a statistic that has been causing headaches for students, teachers and politicians alike.

News stories regarding the latest in the world of medicine are often popular. After all, most people are interested in their own health and that of their family and friends. But sometimes reports can be confusing. For example, one minute coffee seems good for you, and the next it's bad for your health. And remember when 150 health experts from around the world called for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games to be cancelled or postponed because of the Zika virus? This call was swiftly opposed by both the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Sometimes these contradictions reflect differences of opinion in the scientific community, and different approaches to research. These are a normal part of the scientific process. But in other instances, health news misinforms because of the way some journalists interpret and report research findings.

When we launched Beyond the blade earlier this year, we wanted to know how many young people and children were being killed by knives in the UK. Who are these young people being killed?, Where are they dying? Is the scale of the issue changing, and if so how? We spoke to experts about the number of children and teenagers affected in Britain and Northern Ireland. We checked with the Office for National Statistics, the Home Office, politicians, academics and thinktanks. But the answer to how many young people are dying every year, it seemed, was that nobody knows. So we started trying to find out. Until now, there has been no publicly available information about the demographic profiles of those who have died from knife attacks in the UK

We learned this week that the Trump campaign may have tried to dissuade millions of Black voters from voting in 2016 through highly targeted online ads. The investigation, by Channel 4, highlighted a still little-understood online advertising technique, microtargeting. This targets ads at people based on the huge amount of data available about them online. Experts say Big Tech needs to be much more transparent about how microtargeting works, to avoid overblown claims but also counter a potential threat to democracy.

Excellent analysis from the FT (you'll need to login to view via the link) that uses knowledge of the Mean and Median to show that some companies have reported incorrect (fabricated?) pay-gap information! One in 20 UK companies that have submitted gender pay gap data to the government have reported numbers that are statistically improbable and therefore almost certainly inaccurate, a Financial Times analysis has found. Sixteen companies, each with more than 250 employees, reported that they paid their male and female staff exactly the same, that is they had a zero average gender pay gap measured by both the mean and median. Experts on pay said that it was highly anomalous for companies of that size to have median and mean pay gaps that were identical because the two statistics measure different things. The mean gap measures the difference between the average male and female salary while the median gap is calculated using the midpoint salary for each gender.