“Bullspotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation"

Loren Collins, “Bullspotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation”, Prometheus Books, 2012, 248pp.  (Softcover). 

Often when I am listening to podcasts on my Ipod, I hear about an interesting book; that is where I was made aware of this book.  I found it important in the context of the age we live in with the constant bombardment of bogus information: Birthers; Truthers; Moon hoaxers; Antivaxxers; Holocaust deniers; and Young Earth creationists.  These are just a few.  Anyway, this book is useful  in introducing the critical thinking skills so necessary today.

In each chapter, Collins addresses a particular category: denialism, in which one merely attempts to refute an accepted theory rather than produce a viable alternative; conspiracy theories, such as the young Earth creationist’s assertion that all the world’s scientists are colluding to foster belief in evolution or the truthers’ claim that the 9/11 attacks were “an inside job” by the CIA; as well as rumors, quotations, and hoaxes. The three major sources of misinformation, pseudoscience, pseudolaw, and pseudohistory each merit their own chapters; Collins concludes the book with an explanation of the very real harm caused by the belief in demonstrably false ideas (Steve Jobs is one example).  This is an especially good book for teenagers to read.  Of course the schools could not introduce it as it would be too controversial.

My Notes:

Pg. 16:  The Scientific method:  Within less than sixty years, humanity went from putting the first man in flight to putting the first man on the moon.  Common sense, by contrast, told us for most of human history that the world was flat.  That the stars moved, but not the earth.  That the world was composed of but four elements: earth, fire, wind, and water.  That life had existed for only a few thousand years.  That illness was caused by supernatural forces.

Pg. 18:  Some good websites for checking facts:  Snopes.org for the latest lowdown on the latest popular rumors; TruthOrFiction.com and About.com’s Urban Legends page; FactCheck.org; PolitiFact.com.

Pg. 20:  Humans have evolved with a highly developed ability to form patterns, even where they do not exist.  It is better to falsely believe that rustling in the leaves is a lion and be wrong, than to ignore it and be wrong.  We then began to assign meaning and intention and agency to patterns (whether visual or sound).  However, evolution did not provide us with a crap detector that works to counteract our worse tendencies for misinformation; we have to train ourselves to spot misinformation as it presents itself.  We need to develop critical thinking and evidence based beliefs.

Pg. 64:  The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is a 1903 Russian book that purports to document a secret meeting by Jewish leaders as they expounded on how their control of the world’s economies and the press would allow them to mold the world into a Jewish image.  The book was a complete fraud heavily plagiarized from an 1864 French satirical novel,  The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, and it was exposed as a fraud within just a few years.  Despite that, it has continued to be held up by anti-Semites as proof of an international Jewish conspiracy. (of course, Henry Ford’s publication of this book and wide dissemination certainly gave the book a lift).

Pg. 106:  In 1873 the first Supreme Court decision first recognized corporate personhood in the Slaughter House Cases, cases concerning the 1868 14^th amendment.

Pg. 141:  According to a 2011 survey, 46 percent of American Protestant pastors still believe the earth is only about six thousand years old.  (http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/10/survey-u-s-protestant-pastors-reject-evolution-split-on-earths-age/ [accessed November 29, 2013].

Pg. 165:  One of the central tenets of modern medicine is that it is evidence-based, medicines and treatments are adopted for use if they can objectively demonstrate their effectiveness in studies.  Alternative medicines have in common that they don’t demonstrate any effectiveness beyond a placebo effect when studied.

Pg. 170: The CVS chain of pharmacies even has a section of its website devoted to promoting homeopathy.  Because of the widespread interest in alternative medicines, the federal government created the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in 1991 to see if these alternatives had any merit.  Since 1991 they have spent $1.4 billion on evaluating various treatments; their findings have found that massages make sick people feel better; that yoga may improve fatigue; and that many alternative treatments perform no better than do placebos when tested. 

Pg. 188:  Atlantis was first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written in the fourth century BCE.  In the context of Plato’s dialogue, there is little reason to see Atlantis as anything more than a literary device to illustrate a point.

Pg. 213:  Preceding the current 13^th amendment, there was an earlier, failed Thirteenth Amendment. It (TONA) was passed by the US house and Senate in 1810, and read: ‘If any citizen of the US shall accept, claim, receive or retain, any title of nobility or honor, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the US and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them.’  It failed to get the required number of states to approve.

Pg. 246:  It’s not always immediately evident that ‘BIO-Complexity,’ the National Vaccine Information Center, and the Institute for Historical Review are respectively, a creationist publication, an anti-vaccine advocacy group, and a Holocaust-denial organization.