More of Verified

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Chapter 6: The Peer Review one

This chapter goes over the importance of peer reviews sources, as well as the process in which the research reports get accepted as peer reviewed. I was surprised to learn that this process has been established since the 1700’s. I would think misinformation would have gone more unchecked in the past.

The important thing to note with peer reviewed sources is that they are not always accurate assessments of quality. Like the guide points out, “No system is perfect.” Verified addresses the biases and sometimes incompetent reviewers that make up the peer reviewed process. It is for that reason you should scope through a larger array of studies before coming to your conclusions.

Chapter 7: Wikipedia and all that

I was skeptical going into this chapter about Wikipedia. Not just because the various teachers that told me not to use it. I didn’t know what other uses it could have besides doing a background check on an organization. That has been the primary use that Verified mentioned wikipedia for. Ex: See this article claiming that climate change is not real. If you look up their wikipedia page, then you’ll find out that they support blah blah blah.

It’s always this extreme case where the company has motives for spreading misinformation, but this chapter highlighted other ways wikipedia could be useful. The primary one being how it allows you to read the room better.

You need to learn enough about a topic to be able to stake your own claims — to make a case for which positions you think are strong and which don’t hold water.

The start of a research project is always tricky, as I often don’t know what I am talking about. Seeing wikipedia as something to get you started on a topic, and as place where you can find connected sources makes it way more appealing.

Chapter 8: I thought this would be about Video Games

A lot of this chapter felt self-explanatory. Videos are constantly being taken out of context to drive some agenda. The chapter reinforced the idea that you need to stop and think about what you are actually looking at. Of course, you also need to investigate the context of the video: date, length, and claims. It’s easy to just believe visual evidence, but you have to remember that “the shorter a video is, the easier it is to create a false context.”

Chapter 9: Ads…

Finally, this chapter of Verified went over stealth advertisements in news articles. I find it so weird that there aren’t more regulations when it comes to this. All a website needs to do is add a small banner signifying that it’s an advertisement. It’s so comically conniving.

“To put this another way: deception is not an aberration or bug in the system — it’s how the game is played.”

Essentially, just watch out for advertisements within a website. They often reflect poorly on the validity of the claims being made.