Evaluating Evidence: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #6

Today we’re going to focus on how to tell good evidence from bad evidence and maybe importantly, how to identify “Fine, but that doesn’t actually prove your point” evidence - the stuff that the Internet is built on.

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[coralee]

I was raised in a strongly anti-vax household and was told all kinds of horror stories about what would happen to me if I got vaccinated. Last year, at the age of 30, I finally pushed past my lingering anxiety and got the first vaccines of my life, including MMR. This year there's a measles outbreak in my home state of Washington, and it makes me wonder how many lives might have been damaged, or lost, if I hadn't made that choice. I'm so grateful to Crash Course, SciShow, and Nerdfighteria - series like this one have been HUGE in helping me become better at critical thinking, and less trapped by fear. You really are saving lives.

[KingsleyIII]

On top of that spider story giving no evidence, I'm also suspicious of PEOPLE WHO ALWAYS USE ALL-CAPS! It's probably meant to be attention grabbing. All-caps has its uses, but if all you type is all-caps, I suspect you only want attention, so the story is probably bogus. All-caps is the text equivalent of yelling. Use it carefully. Do you yell all the time? No! Would people take you seriously if you did? No! So, I'd say be skeptical of anyone who makes outrageous claims using all-caps.

[mikenorman]

One person with measles was chased into a moon landing studio by a new species of spider and downvoted this video.

[rubyppower]

The moon is actually made out of cheese [Source - Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out]

[ChefMimsy]

(Another) Excellent video. Sadly, it's another example of preaching to the choir. The folks who need to learn this lesson aren't likely to watch this. But for those of us who care about this stuff, it's an excellent reminder. Hopefully critical thinking skills are already part of everyone's tool kit. It's a shame a large chunk of the population fear people who know how to think

[cholten]

Crash Course logical fallacies please.

[RegitYouTuber]

Really enjoying this series - not that I can give any evidence for that

[ArawnOfAnnwn]

A lot of the examples in this vid were of very low-hanging fruit, which doesn't help people parse more complex digital narratives. Also, the vid (and series so far) doesn't address the issue of motivation for verification I.e. apathy regarding the accuracy of many outlandish online claims, which is I think the real reason they're shared so much. To explain -

Listening to most of the examples in this vid, it felt akin to teaching people how to avoid falling for that Nigerian prince e-mail scam. Sure a sizable absolute number of people might fall for it each year, but that's only because of how widespread it is (i.e. the vast majority of its recipients don't fall for it). Things like the moon landings being fake are by now internet memes for most - that's how much credibility they have for most people. This doesn't tell us anything about how to deal with far more well-constructed narratives, which also typically involve far more believable i.e. far less fantastic, claims.

For instance, if a particular politician is accused of corruption or nepotism during election season, that isn't something people are automatically skeptical of - it's perfectly within the realm of possibility, and indeed hardly uncommon. Sure you can say we should wait till investigations determine whether this is true, but long before that we've got an election to vote in and need to know whether to prima facie believe the accusations or not. And such accusations typically do come with some sort of initial 'evidence', which typically a layman isn't enough of an expert to evaluate.

Ditto a lot of the science articles in the media making claims based on fringe science, which while it may not be mainstream opinion still cite a paper published in a scientific journal (and there's thousands of those out there - we can't be expected to know the trustworthiness of all of them, nor can we expect all scientists to have been able to get into Nature or another of the handful of well-known journals). Nutrition is an especially notorious field for this.

So what are we supposed to do in these (and other such) cases? The evidence is there, and it's not so easy to dismiss as a random chain post about spiders on social media with zero citations or references to back it up. And keep in mind that expecting people to do more than, say, 5-10 mins of research (at max) on something they find online is setting an unreasonable standard. Atm people don't cross-check stuff at all, and I agree that needs to change, but you'll never manage more than getting them to google something for a bit - they've got other things in their lives to do too. So in-depth investigation is out of the question (except for things that're important decisions to them, like whether to get your child vaccinated).

Lastly, it's worth noting that things like that spider post on social media mostly get shared not because most people believe in it, but because most of them simply don't care. They're not going to cross-check it not because they fear being wrong, but because they don't really give a damn whether it's right or wrong. It's a chain post - it sounds interesting, it's asking them to share it and so they do. Chain mails of the past were the same. And therein lies the biggest challenge for what this course is trying to achieve - apathy. I'm going to guess the vast majority of the people watching this series already inculcate a lot of the habits and outlooks it's trying to promote - you're essentially preaching to the choir. But if you really want to make a difference, then we're going to need something that breaks through that apathy to get others who don't care (not don't believe in, just don't care - there's a difference) to bother with all this hassle to do it. And examples like that spider story don't help - it's easy to see the harm in not getting vaccinations, but spreading rumors of that sort is pretty much seen as harmless. Or, in other words, people who'd never spread anti-vaccination claims may still circulate stories like that of your spider example, simply because it's not something that triggers any kind of strong reaction to it among them (either for or against). It's 'just social media things', so to speak.

Anyway, I hope the next episode gets into dealing with far harder to evaluate misinformation campaigns. And please don't take this the wrong way - this was all meant as constructive criticism. Cheers!

[kevinm]

YES ANOTHER VIDEO I LOVE ALL YOUR VIDEOS!

[RangerRuby]

Me: *This Tuesday could not get more boring...*
Crash Course: *Post new Crash Course Navigating Digital information video*
Me: *Bring out the Happy Dance Music!*

[biggerdoofus]

I think the correlation does not equal causation part should come with a caveat. If the point being argued is negative (ie. A does not cause B), then showing a negative correlation means that any argument to the opposite (A does cause B) would then need stronger evidence because it needs to compensate for the question of how the negative correlation was overcome. To give an example, the fact that violence in the US has gone down sharply since the advent and rapid rise of the first-person shooter genre makes it harder to argue that first-person shooters cause violence, since that would raise the question of why violence is still going down.

[tacowaco]

When you watch this after watching a video of yours from six years ago, wow you changed a lot... in a good way

[youtility]

As far as conspiracy theories go, one of the main problems is the lack of falsifiability. Most of the people you engage regarding topics like this go out of their way to try and disprove mainstream theories, but never their own. When you ask them "how would you know if you are wrong" you generally get a nonanswer ("I just know") or they will require an unreasonable amount of evidence.

Also, there's the prevalent problem of the "direct-realism" philosophy. This is the "I'll believe it when I see it" or "I know what I saw" philosophy. Which is not necessarily a problem, but can be a major one in regards to popular issues. The earth is flat because they /personally/ don't see the curvature of the earth. Or they believe autism causes vaccines because someone close to them had the two happen concurrently. You can confront them on this directly but it doesn't seem to help. Sure, conspiracies can be fun to believe in, but become very problematic when they affect real people.

Anyone who has any advice or help, this would be welcome!

[tinango]

Can you guys make a video on the different types of evidence eg RCT, cohort studies, observational studies, etc and what makes them a higher level quality of evidence

[coletakkish]

0:42 John is like Ty Lopez in reverse
“Here in my studio, with my vast knowledge, but do you know that I like more than all this knowledge?
Lamborghinis.”

[megeaton]

Hey for the people who go to my school and take geography, here is the answer to #1 in the digital literacy tracker: bad and good evidence. Answer for #2 is: 7:03 Answer for #3 is: 7:29? I'm not entirely sure about the last answer I think you just have to decide it on your own. Idk.

[annichan]

CrashCourse is one of the best things that could have happened to YouTube 👍

[jibbaspaa]

we need to get this CC series into classrooms, and perhaps in front of politicians

[JosephDavies]

An example of "evidence being reliable but irrelevant" is the snowball you mentioned. It was true that it was snowing in DC at that time, and it is likely that the snowball was real (I have no reason to doubt this trivial prop). The biggest problem is that the weather in Washington D.C. is, as you pointed out, not directly relevant to the global climate of our planet. This was essentially a strawman argument being presented by the Senator, as he was arguing against a claim not actually being made by proponents of anthropogenic climate change, and therefore the evidence (regardless of its veracity) does not refute the actual claim.

[brucetsai]

honestly our boss can refuse a pay rise by saying, "because I said so". no word of a lie.