Scholarly Sources Are Often Incorrect and Must Be Vetted Carefully Before They Are Worthy Of Trust
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While taking this class and reading Humble’s book The Humble Argument, I have spent a lot of time considering how to go about determining which sources are reliable. Humble notes that there is a wide range in the quality of a source, and that it is important to understand the levels. Roy Humble asserts that “Scholarly writers are the most credible because they are both knowledgeable about their field - the way that a paid professional is - and they’re trained in methods of gathering and testing evidence within that field”(83). While this is true, it is a blanket statement that must be riddled with exceptions and caveats in order to reasonably put the trust in these sources. In short, it is too simplistic. It is a little like saying people in the USA are often white. While this is true, it doesn't mean if I meet a random person, I can expect them to be white. In the case of these sources I think it is not only wise, but necessary to look deeper before placing a level of trust. Even after doing your due diligence, it is imperative to stay wary, and open-minded.
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I am going to start from an assumption that these are generally the sources that are the most rigorously researched and documented and deserving of the most trust and from there identify possible FLAWS with this assumption. To reach my thesis statement, I have divided the evidence into three very loose categories. In the area of science category there are problematic trends in research and peer-reviewed journals. The second category explores how corporations and other organizations have used their influence to manipulate news, scientific research, and more. Lastly I take a look at the mainstream media, and US government’s involvement in similar manipulations.
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Humble identifies peer-reviewed journals as being in the “deep end” of the evidence pool however, there are a number of ways incorrect information can enter peer-reviewed journals. In order to understand some of these it is important to understand a little about the environment researchers often work in. Often times a researchers funding can be impacted by the results of their past research. This, while understandable, however can lead some skewed research. This system gives an incentive to researchers to produce positive results. The result is that less and less negative results are being reported (Fanelli). Results can be manipulated in a large number of ways, some more fraudulent than others. Perhaps a scientist runs five separate experiments on five different types of mice, and only two of the mice species produce the expected results. In this case, a scientist may only report on the two studies done with a positive result. This is only one way of many that data can be selectively reported on .
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Even when all the raw data is included, it can still be abused in a way that presents the author's’ viewpoint in a undeserved positive light. Darrell Huff, in his classic book How to Lie With Statistics clearly lays out a number of ways that manipulation of the data can be done in a wide variety of ways. For example, if a study states that “76% of people interviewed have admitted to having murdered someone”, this would be very alarming. However if you then learn that the study only polled death row inmates, the statistic is much less alarming. This is known as biased sampling. Another example Huff describes is poorly chosen averages. If a man drowns in a body of water that is an average of 6 inches deep, that is surprising. However, if the specific area he drowned in was 8 feet deep, our understanding of the situation changes greatly (33). This type of manipulation happens in the most trustworthy of journals and publications, and is a solid argument in favor of making each source earn your trust instead of giving it them them unfounded.
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Scientists’ need to publish in order to survive in their field leads to some problems. One such problem is the practice of “predatory journals”. There are many esteemed journals that have a predatory journal with a nearly identical name, so chosen to confuse people. These journals will often publish nearly anything, allowing the researching to technically claim their work was published. Piotr Sorokowski describes in his article for Nature, titled “Predatory Journals Recruit Fake Editor”, how he created a made-up doctor who was unqualified then sent out a resume to journals, and found that a number of them offered the sham scientist jobs as an editor. The article makes it clear that the character was designed to not fool any publication willing to even come close to performing their due diligence before giving a job offer.
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In order to truly understand just how bad a predatory journal can be, it is first necessary to realize that even the findings in leading journals accuracy may be less accurate than a two-sided coin toss. Benedict Carey, writing for the New York Times reports “Now, a painstaking yearslong effort to reproduce 100 studies published in three leading psychology journals has found that more than half of the findings did not hold up when retested.” This is a serious issue. If this were not bad enough, Carey reveals “the vetted studies were considered part of the core knowledge by which scientists understand the dynamics of personality, relationships, learning and memory.” In short, these studies were well-respected studies that had influenced the profession as a whole for years.
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These things make the situation look bleak. John Ioannidis published a paper titled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” One of the reasons given for the titular claim is that research papers can be overturned by new research. In the article Ioannidis puts forth six corollaries about the likelihood of a research finding being true, with number five being “The greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, the less likely the research findings are to be true”. Clearly if most research findings are false, the the level of trust that is reasonable to give to these sources drops considerably. Many examples of corporate influence muddying the results of research can be easily found, as will be shown.
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Corporations or other entities with an agenda, pay researchers to publish certain results that fit in their agenda. Google has received criticism for essentially offering payment for a certain type of paper. Just one example of 329 is the case of Paul Heald who is a law professor at the University of Illinois. He approached Google with an idea for a paper he could write. Google liked the idea and funded him nearly $20,000 to write it. The paper did not note that it was funded by google when it was published, and when asked about this glaring oversight, Heald replied “Oh, wow. No, I didn’t. That’s really bad ... That’s purely oversight.” (Mullins, et al.). Heald was not alone in his oversight though. According to Mullins, in 66% of the 329 papers published, the authors did not disclose Google as their funding source. To be clear, this is not oversight. This is corruption.
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While it is beyond the scope of this essay to thoroughly cover them, there are many more incidences. For example, the tobacco industry was ordered not to lie about the health benefits of low-tar tobacco, and their argument against this was that this infringed upon their freedom of speech. They continued to pay experts willing to lie about the health benefits of low-tar tobacco (Heath). Another example has recently caused quite a stir. In the 1960s and onwards it was found that the sugar industry set about subverting the mainstream opinion as well as laws. They worked to move health criticism from sugar to fat by paying scientists to publish results that they handpicked. One scientist they paid was the chairman of the nutrition department at Harvard, Dr. Fredrick J. Stare. Another later ended up at the United States Department of Agriculture as the head of nutrition, where he “helped draft the forerunner to the federal government’s dietary guidelines”(O'Connor).
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Corporations and scientific journals are not alone in their flaws and corruption. The government and various political organizations as well as media organizations also routinely lie to the public. For example, in a senate hearing in 1975, the CIA admitted to having CIA agents in major news organizations such as the New York Times for an effort called “Operation Mockingbird” (R11110000). In his article in Rolling Stone “The CIA and the Media”, Carl Bernstein quotes William B. Bader of the CIA as saying "There is quite an incredible spread of relationships. You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are [Central Intelligence] Agency people at the management level." Clearly having someone working for the CIA as a manager of journalists gives any reasonable person cause to doubt our media’s accuracy.
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Media corporations are willing to trick their readers into believing an advertisement is actually a trustworthy piece of journalism. In an article for the Wall Street Journal, Steven Perlberg reported that in 2015 CNN announced a studio named “Courageous” with the intent to work with advertising partners to create promotional media. The media segments created are “branded content” meaning they carry the CNN brand. (Perlberg) The problem with this is content is tailored to look like journalism, not advertising. CNN is not alone in this alarming practice, Politico has hired Stephanie Losee to created branded content, although she calls it “brand journalism” (Sebastian). By doing this, these media corporations are choosing to lower their standards down to that of an advertisement. The general public should give them the same trust they would give an advertisement.
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Propaganda is legal in the United States and is used on it’s citizens regularly. The Smith-Mundt Act was a peice of US legislation meant to prevent the government from using propaganda on its own citizens. However as reported by Foreign Policy, this was repealed in 2013(Hudson). Before this was repealed, the Bush administration was criticized for “pre-packaged news” (Barstow and Stein). “The "reporter"... was actually a public relations professional working under a false name...”
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It is clear that scholarly sources are often given more trust and credit than they deserve. The scientific method does not exist in a vacuum, nor do journalistic integrity. Scientists and journalists can get information wrong even when they are completely honest. When you mix in funding from sources with a specific agenda, and pressures to wow readers the information we read only becomes more suspect. It is necessary to read criticisms of an article, criticisms of its author, to look at where they and the publication they write for get their funding. Even after doing background research, it is important to keep in mind that there is much that may not be known, which may influence the accuracy of a source. For example, it may not be known if the CIA has paid a journalist, or if that journalist is a character played by an employee of the government to film propaganda. Regularly scientists are found to have inaccurately reported their findings, and not report when they have been secretly funded by a corporation or group. This means that these sources have not earned a reader's’ trust just from the merits of the publication the article is in or the degrees the author holds. If a person wishes to only accept credible sources, there is no easy answer. It requires careful research, and an acknowledgement that closely held beliefs may be challenged and proven wrong.
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