Remember how I mentioned that some guys out there decided to dub the internet as a car and thought they should write a car manual for it? Well, in the next few chapters of “Verified” by Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineburg, four and five, we dive right back in with some more instructions that were not included when you were first taught about being smart on the internet.
You Were Taught to Read Wrong
Believe it or not, according to chapter four of this book you are reading incorrectly. Well, you’re doing research wrong really. Lateral reading is this very important thing where you don’t read the first website you click on from top to bottom. Instead, read everything surrounding that website, or in other words read everything except that website. Are you confused yet? (Don’t worry check out this crash course!)
Remember: the internet is like a spider web where everything is connected. Looking at the bigger picture can give you insight about one particular thing, in this case a source. If you want to know that a piece of information is reliable, you have to look beyond the about page or the home page. Ask yourself what is everyone else saying about this?
The book puts the whole concept simply:
“The big message of lateral reading is: get off the page (92).”
The Infamous N95 Math Problem
Getting fooled on the internet is a lot easier than you think it is. Chapter five of “Verified” makes it very clear with their example of a bottle washing up with an article about N95 masks not protecting against COVID-19. (I know, I too am over the pandemic.)
The point of this example was that we tend to believe information when there’s big words and numbers to back it up. We take what we think we know and run with it thus a big problem occurs where it turns out that our expertise we thought we had was not all the expertise we need.
Similar to chapter four, you have to step back. You need to return to your newly gained knowledge of SIFT and find other coverage. What is everyone else saying about a piece of information? What are the experts specifically saying about it? (Here’s another video combining SIFT and Lateral Reading!)
The Solution to Your Problems
There’s no better way to think of these two chapters as 40 pages (Only 40? I know right!) of do your research before you trust anything and always look at what the rest of the internet is saying. Especially when you have no idea about the context!
Comments
3 responses to “Instructions Not Clear, I Ran Over The Curb”
This is such a fun and relatable take on the chapters! You pull people in with your titles and headings, and I love it. I like how you explain lateral reading and how instead of just reading one source, we really need to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. It’s like peeking at the entire spider web instead of just one strand and saying ‘eh good enough.’ It’s all one big web in the end. The example about the N95 masks really drives home how easily we can be misled, especially when numbers and big words are thrown around. Love that you brought us back to our good ol’ friend SIFT as well. All of this is just a great reminder that we shouldn’t take everything at face value. The emphasis on checking what others are saying before trusting information is key.
“There’s no better way to think of these two chapters as 40 pages to tell you the same thing.” Yeah… that’s kind of what the guide has been feeling like. Each chapter introduces very small steps that heavily builds upon/reiterates the previous ones. These chapters, however, felt even more similar. By reading the room you are trying to understand the context of the source, so you end up investigating more about them. You find information on the organization or other articles that debunk them, which is essentially the purpose of lateral reading. I appreciate the relatable tone.
First of all I love your title lol. I also love the conclusion you come to. I kind of felt bad while I was reading it because a lot of my notes ended up being, “You literally already told me this three chapters ago.” I think you did a really great job of summarizing the information in these chapters and showing how they’re really just both elaborating on the idea that you probably should look up a source or idea instead of just taking it at face value or fact checking it against itself. It’s funny because the solution is actually a really good solution, it’s just not quite so complicated as someone might think after reading 40 pages on it.