- #1
Pinewater234
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On the web I find misunderstandings of a scientific result, clear bias, and obviously wrong information. For subjects close to my expertise, I can identify the errors. Subjects outside my expertise are not so easy: I spend hours surfing the web to try to verify a single statement, and often end up lost in the morass of questionable information.
How can we combat this?
A few ideas I've had:
What do you think? What ideas do you have?
How can we combat this?
A few ideas I've had:
- Create a search engine which only admits well-supported, unbiased articles. Problem: this has to be moderated, which could introduce bias unless the moderation committee is very careful.
Scientific articles attempt to provide a source of this. They do pretty well at it, although there are still incorrectly done studies and inaccurate results published. The main problem with this is it's geared towards experts. Without a doctor's training, good luck understanding medical literature.
Encyclopedias collect factual, unbiased information (in principle... I just realized I haven't checked their sources). However, the information provided in them is often too brief. It's possible that I'm looking in the wrong encyclopedias.
Wikipedia attempts to provide factual, unbiased articles which provide good explanations to a wide range of topics. But, the killer is anyone can edit an article at any time; until a moderator checks that article, misinformation which has been added will stay on the page. Hopefully Wikipedia tries to eliminate bias from the article moderators; this I don't know.
- Compile a list of websites which aim to collect information which is unbiased and factual.Through trial and error, I've found a few websites which seem to be factual and unbiased, from what I've read. Examples are HyperPhysics and Scholarpedia. Collecting a multi-disciplinary list of these would be another solution. Call it a "guide to the factual internet", or something similar. Educational institutions could be contacted to determine which pages they most recommend for accuracy and lack of bias. However, since professors can themselves be biased, a wide range of universities must be contacted.
What do you think? What ideas do you have?