UCSF Talk -- How to Think, How to Be
- 1. How to Think, How to Be Presented at UC San Francisco Marcus A Banks November 21, 2016
- 2. Topic General principles of critical evaluation of sources, which apply to everything from wiki entries to journal articles to news stories to textbooks.
- 4. Call to Action Be a more thoughtful reader, watcher and listener.
- 5. Facts and Erroneous Information
- 6. Settled Facts (A Partial List) 2 + 2 = 4 Yellow and Blue Make Green There are 180 degrees in a triangle A square is a rectangle, a rectangle is not a square
- 9. D. Robert Worley, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/d-robert-worley/conservatives-progressives_b_1879200.html
- 11. Overstatement: Passion These are strongly held claims, honorably made. Rhetorical over-reach occurs, but without a conscious attempt to evade, mislead or deceive. Signs of a passionate overstater: They have argued the same points the same way for many years They frequently use phrases such as “well, we’re all entitled to our opinion” and “guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
- 13. Scientific Studies with John Oliver
- 14. Mis-statement: Bad Incentives Novelty and Bold Claims Publish or Perish Scholarly Publishing Errors or Fraud in Articles Retraction of Scientific Papershttp://retractionwatch.com/
- 15. Misconduct accounts for the majority of the retracted scientific publication. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1212247109 http://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/17028.full.pdf?with-ds=yes
- 16. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/17028.full.pdf?with-ds=yes Misconduct accounts for the majority of the retracted scientific publications. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1212247109
- 17. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/17028.full.pdf?with-ds=yes Misconduct accounts for the majority of the retracted scientific publications. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1212247109
- 18. Mis-Statement: Bad Incentives More disturbing than the excesses of passionate overstatement An active intent to deceive Explainable – not justified ethically – as the consequence of perverse incentives behind academic advancement Change those incentives, change the behavior
- 24. Lies: Bad Character An active intent to defame and deceive Not reversible by shifting incentives Responses by shaming are futile, as this entire mode is shameless
- 25. Why Lies Work Confirmation Bias: We all gravitate toward information that confirms our pre- conceptions, and recoil from information that challenges our ideas System 1 Thinking (Daniel Kahneman): The mind generally makes rapid decisions on the basis of limited and/or false information
- 26. Be a more thoughtful reader, watcher and listener. How to Think, How to Be
- 27. How to Think, How to Be Proactively call on System 2 Thinking. The conscious mind that actively challenges our mental short cuts and lazy thinking. Hard but invigorating work. Support good and engaging journalism. Trust Project: http://thetrustproject.org/
- 28. Do not despair. The Internet is still just a baby, so the infantile behavior we see online is not so surprising. The Web remains the greatest tool for knowledge creation and sharing ever known. We can help it grow
- 29. Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- #4: Premise: A continuum of human motivations – from more to less noble – results in the distribution of many types of erroneous information.
- #7: Many things are not so clear cut.
- #14: You can click on this image to play the video, it starts at 2min 15 second
- #15: Scholarly publishing rewards novelty and “bold claims,” leading people to cut corners. Publication at all costs (“publish or perish”) serves as another incentive to writing quickly and carelessly. Retractions of scientific papers an enduring problem: http://retractionwatch.com/
- #16: By Fang, Steen, and Casadevall, 2012
- #17: By Fang, Steen, and Casadevall, 2012
- #18: By Fang, Steen, and Casadevall, 2012 The good news is that the percentage of retraction is still relatively small.
- #21: PWL: I think this slide is repeating the information on the next slide. You can verbally talk about it, no need to show the text.