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Simon Knight

Press regulators need to act when scientific facts are denied | New Scientist - 0 views

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    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?
Simon Knight

How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail - Scientific American - 0 views

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    Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In fact, people seem to double down on their beliefs in the teeth of overwhelming evidence against them. The reason is related to the worldview perceived to be under threat by the conflicting data.
Simon Knight

Facts about migration and crime in Sweden - Government.se - 0 views

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    Interesting to see such a fact check from a government agency. In recent times, simplistic and occasionally completely inaccurate information about Sweden and Swedish migration policy has been disseminated. Here, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs looks at some of the most common claims.
Simon Knight

Year in Review: FactCheck and the weasel-words, cherry-picking and overstatements of 2016 - 0 views

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    Bald-faced lies are, thankfully, fairly rare in Australian politics. Being caught in an outright fib or blooper is still seen as shameful. The problem in Australia is that facts and statistics are frequently twisted to paint a misleading picture. Weasel-words, cherry-picking and overstatements are common. Our politicians and lobby groups are masterful at disguising opinion and ideology as fact, and making statements that, ultimately, aren't checkable. These tactics are harder to spot, but equally dangerous. FactCheck: Is 30% of Northern Territory farmland and 22% of Tasmanian farmland foreign-owned? Election FactCheck: are many refugees illiterate and innumerate? Election FactCheck Q&A: has the NBN been delayed? Election FactCheck Q&A: is it true Australia's unemployment payment level hasn't increased in over 20 years? And more...
Simon Knight

More or Less: Behind the stats (podcast) - 0 views

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    A podcast series that fact checks and discusses statistical claims...they're short (10 minute) episodes, and normally pretty interesting! (you just have to get over the British accent) This episode: Does the world really spend three times as much on ice cream than on humanitarian aid?
Simon Knight

Fact Check: Does the Senate health-care bill include cuts to Medicaid? - 0 views

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    Washington Post video discussing changes to Medicaid in the US. Republicans say they're not cutting Medicaid, they're increasing funding (just by less), others say this is a cut. The White House includes misleading and incomplete information in its video explaining Obamacare's failures.
Simon Knight

Could Trump Really Deport Millions of Unauthorized Immigrants? - The New York Times - 0 views

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    This is a really great example of using a visualisation to communicate a quantitative fact check. This claim is a good case for doing a basic plausibility check, and thinking about what numeric information you'd need to know to understand the claim (e.g., how many people are deported now (what's the baseline), and what are the estimates for the maximum number of unauthorized immigrants in the country?).
Simon Knight

How we do FactChecks at The Conversation - 0 views

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    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.
Simon Knight

FactCheck: what are the facts on jobs and growth in Australia? - 0 views

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    Christopher Pyne has overstated how well Australia is performing on jobs and growth compared to other major economies. IMF estimates for 2016 on GDP growth had put Australia ahead of the G7 countries. But the latest available data - which are actual figures as of the third quarter of 2016, not estimates - show that Australia's cumulative growth in 2016 so far is at the level of the G7 and not higher. So Australia is performing in line with the G7 and slightly worse than the OECD average.
Simon Knight

Methodology: finding the numbers on Australia's foreign aid spending over time - 0 views

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    As the author of this FactCheck, I was asked to review the facts on Australia's foreign aid spending from the Menzies era to 2016-17. Sir Robert Menzies was prime minister from 1949 to 1966, which is the Menzies era for present purposes. (Menzies also served as prime minister from 1939 to 1941.) I examined the evidence for and against this statement: Aid was at its highest under Menzies, at 0.5% … when per capita income was much lower. - World Vision Australia Chief Advocate Tim Costello, quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald, December 28, 2016. I found the statement to be incorrect, strictly interpreted, though Costello's broader point is valid. The ratio of Australia's aid to its gross national income has never exceeded 0.48%, and that level was achieved slightly after the conclusion of the Menzies era, in the financial year 1967-68. Below, I explain how I arrived at this conclusion, providing more detail than could be accommodated in the FactCheck itself.
Simon Knight

Fact file: Domestic violence in Australia - Fact Check - ABC News (Australian Broadcast... - 0 views

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    A complex look at an important issue and what data can tell us about it, and how missing data complicates the picture.
Simon Knight

What happens when misinformation is corrected? Understanding the labeling of content - 0 views

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    What happens once misinformation is corrected? Is it effective at all? A major problem for social media platforms resides in the difficulty to reduce the spread of misinformation. In response, measures such as the labeling of false content and related articles have been created to correct users' perceptions and accuracy assessment. Although this may seem a clever initiative coming from social media platforms, helping users to understand which information can be trusted, restrictive measures also raise pivotal questions. What happens to those posts which are false, but do not display any tag flagging their untruthfulness? Will we be able to discern them?
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