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from the people-who-know-what-they-are-talking-about dept.
On March 27, 2015, astronaut Scott Kelly rode a rocket to the International Space Station. Waving up at him from Earth was Mark Kelly, his mustachioed twin brother. While they were 400 vertical kilometres apart, NASA scientists studied how the human body reacts to the stresses of long-term space travel. Scott was the test subject; Mark served as the control. Over the course of the one-year mission, NASA extensively examined the twins' physiology, gut bacteria and even their genetic code – sure enough, NASA saw the toll of space stress on Scott.
However, NASA's sloppy wording of their findings, followed by reporting from a non-critical media, beamed the research into the realm of science fiction. "Space travel changes our genes" said one news report in March. "NASA astronaut's DNA no longer matches his twin" reported another.
These articles quoted NASA's January 2018 report which stated Scott's genetic code differed from Mark's by 7 per cent. That's not just an improbably claim – it's an impossible one, with identical twins. In anyone, twin or sibling or unrelated human, a 7-per-cent change in genetic code would mutate that person into something not human-like. "What NASA meant by genetic code was, in fact, gene expression," Smith said. "If only the journalists had quoted scientists, this incident of fake science could have been averted."
So what is the difference between genetic code and gene expression? Your genetic code is a blueprint for your body's functioning. The cells in your liver and heart contain the same code. Yet, these cells differ in their functioning because of differences in the deployment – the active expression – of the cell's genetic code. "If every gene in your cells were being actively expressed, your kidneys would be growing eyes," Smith joked.
[...] With manned missions costing taxpayers millions of dollars, the public trusts NASA. That two-way channel of trust is mediated by journalists. Scientists who convey the information in the first place need to make sure their data is sound – and their communication about it, clear.
[Source]: University of Western Ontario
This is an interesting take on "fake news". Do you think that scientists don't do enough to convey news accurately? Or, is the media to blame for bad/sensational reporting?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 26 2018, @03:46PM (14 children)
Fake news is a meme created to let you dismiss things you disagree with. It is a tool given to you to help you keep your cognitive dissonance going. Unfortunately for CNN it backfired on them.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday May 26 2018, @04:26PM (4 children)
Fake news is something reporting itself as news, which is fake. For example a news report saying that 15 people were killed by a suicide bomber in Berlin yesterday would be fake news, it is demonstrably false. Saying that Mike Alig-Juzfahrted has been appointed superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, or that the Pope had endorsed a candidate for the US presidency in 2016 is demonstrably false.
I agree that the accusation has been thrown around more recently to refer to things which are not demonstrably false, either opinion or accusations or predictions or even just plain mistakes, but it certainly exists.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by unauthorized on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:42PM (3 children)
Fake news is also whenever you report the objective truth about people SJW don't like, incels for being a good recent example.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by jmorris on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:51PM
Nah, that is propaganda, the Narrative, spin and blatant editorializing. Fakenews is when it is entirely bullcrap. Russia! Russia! Russia! for example qualifies because there appears to literally be nothing real there other than projection, deflection and maybe a bit of wish casting. Stormy Daniels' lawyer being camped on CNN multiple times a day isn't even FakeNews, that is just the Narrative flogging a story nobody cares about to avoid covering stories people outside DC do care about.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday May 27 2018, @02:15PM (1 child)
unauthorized wrote:
How about if *you* choose a different word for that, hmm? like: "news", for example.
You're muddying the waters, and it doesn't help.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Monday May 28 2018, @01:40AM
I'm really not really, this comment is meant to satirize the propensity of people calling "fake news" when they are the one being deluded by their social media bubbles.
(Score: 5, Informative) by fritsd on Saturday May 26 2018, @04:55PM (8 children)
can we please go back to calling it "lies" then?
AFAIK the word "lies" is not contaminated and very clear.
"fake news" is not real news of things that have happened: OK agreed
it pretends to be real news: OK agreed
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therefore "fake news" is lies?
Now can we take this one step further?
I have read about internationally known people the last 2 years, who have called certain news reports "fake news", where those news reports were proven to contain true facts, that have been corroborated by other witnesses, and where the nature of the news reports was such that, if the news report *had been* "fake news", it would have easily been proven, exposing the sloppiness or malice of those reporters.
Since that didn't happen, it proves the opposite: those internationally known people labelled something as "fake news" which was proven to be "real news", and they didn't retract that they'd made a mistake, or saw the facts on the ground wrong, or mumble about dodgy aluminium rods and yellowcake from Nigèr [wikipedia.org], or anything to address or mitigate the disagreement about facts.
Can we then start calling such people "fake people" instead? Or "liars"?
Everybody sometimes says stupid shit that others correct them for. Especially me (why else am I here).
But there are two kinds of people: the kind that can admit: "ok I said it wrong, or I saw it wrong, I agree with you that the reality is different",
and the kind that thinks: "I don't make mistakes, reality is what I say it is, and I call you a liar so that the effect and purpose of the words that I speak is, that my minions [wikipedia.org] will classify you in their "out group" [wikipedia.org] for disagreeing with The Leader they festooned with their, genuine, loyalty and trust.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:16PM (4 children)
No. When the news reported Bill Clinton's claim that he did not have sex with Monica Lewinski, they reported a lie (as Clinton later had to admit that he did have sex with her). But it was not fake news (because they didn't make up that claim, they truthfully reported Clinton's lie).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:24PM (1 child)
There is a difference between truly reporting a lie, and lying in a report.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by suburbanitemediocrity on Saturday May 26 2018, @08:19PM
What's the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman?
The car salesman knows when he's lying.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Saturday May 26 2018, @07:51PM (1 child)
Not all lies are fake news, nor does fake news need to contain lies. A selective reporting of facts combined with opinion can do a fine job of giving everyone the wrong idea.
(Score: 2) by VanessaE on Monday May 28 2018, @02:32AM
Not to mention that a lot of the time, it is simply any kind of news, from any source, about any subject, which some snowflake thinks is just being spread around and reported for the sole purpose of capturing mindshare or just to bury something that that person deems to be more important...so to him/her, it's "fake news". Doesn't matter if it's true, just matters if it's being repeated enough.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Saturday May 26 2018, @05:31PM (1 child)
I remember this same debate wrt free software vs. open source software. It was a vigorous debate, and it was lost.
Free software, software which respects freedom (usually expressed as Stallman's four freedoms), was being called by some (notably Eric Raymond) as "open source" despite that term referring to a range of things including software which was nonfree (proprietary) but incidentally had source code available for viewing.
So, in great "how are we going to lie and spin this" fashion, the idea was "I know! We'll just say* that to be open source, it has to
be free softwaregrant certain conditions that have no special connection to freedom but are just randomly in our definition! That'll answer that objection!"Sort of the same has happened with fake news (fiction or hoax purported falsely to be truth).
Even though that phrase has a definition, many have decided "we'll just say fake news is ........." followed by whatever is convenient/inconvenient for them.
I catch a lot of flack here for pointing out that words mean things. The flackers usually say "language evolves! get with the times!" as if all changes were good ones. They aren't all good changes.
"Fake news" is a phrase with a meaning (see above). However, given current idiotic cultural trends, it is more common to see someone use that phrase to mean something entirely different. Because you are not using the words with any specific meaning intended, it's impossible to use words to talk rationally about the issue.
Since that subversion is so handy for many, and they're getting away with it (aided and abetted by the "language evolves!" flackers), it's unlikely that we will be calling things by their truthful names (lies, etc.) anytime soon.
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* "We'll just say" is a time honored phrase used to both justify and plan lying.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday May 27 2018, @05:27AM
Thanks for saying this. I'll just note my journal entry [soylentnews.org] that says similar things in more detail, because I got tired of pointing out that words mean things in this instance.
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Sunday May 27 2018, @12:42AM
Lies are intentional falsehoods. It's very hard to discern motive when someone utters a falsehood. You usually can't tell whether the falsehood was intentional or not. Fake news covers both situations where it's a lie or whether it's just a falsehood that someone mistakenly believes.