<story><title>Fact Check now available in Google Search and News</title><url>https://blog.google/products/search/fact-check-now-available-google-search-and-news-around-world/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paulddraper</author><text>It is color? Or colour? Should my English dictionary include &amp;quot;haiku&amp;quot;? What about &amp;quot;teriyaki&amp;quot;? &amp;quot;Shamisen&amp;quot;?  Is it &amp;quot;Internet&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;internet&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;Everything has some wiggle room, but both fact checking and spell checking rely on precise rules to a great exent. You just have to recognize when something is really an opinion. Many things on Politifact, etc. are inferences and conclusions composed of facts, but not facts themselves.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Aaron Burr was vice-president of the US in 1803.&amp;quot; Fact.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Sun convert light elements to heavier ones via fusion.&amp;quot; Fact.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It is legal for a licensed gun owner to open-carry in California.&amp;quot; Falsehood.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The US is in an economic depression.&amp;quot; Too vague, can&amp;#x27;t be fact checked.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The US has lower unemployment than in 2010, and higher unemployment than in 2000.&amp;quot; Fact.</text></item><item><author>zeteo</author><text>&amp;gt; Fact checking is like spell check.&lt;p&gt;No it&amp;#x27;s not. Spell checking relies on very precise rules. Fact checking relies on assessing context and, more often than not, the speaker&amp;#x27;s intention.&lt;p&gt;For example, let&amp;#x27;s take the statement &amp;quot;There are 300 million people in the US&amp;quot;. Is this false? Well, it depends where I&amp;#x27;m going with it.&lt;p&gt;If I was only relying on the figure as an approximation, I can say something like &amp;quot;therefore deaths from terrorism only affect 0.0x%, which is not something we should worry a lot about&amp;quot;. This is obviously a factually valid argument, even though you might disagree with the conclusion b&amp;#x2F;c you think other facts are more relevant etc.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, my argument can also be &amp;quot;and there were 300 million in 2007, therefore the population has been stagnant and we need to do something about it&amp;quot;. This is factually quite false, since the population has in fact increased by ~18M.&lt;p&gt;Now should the original statement &amp;quot;there are 300 million people in the US&amp;quot; be rated true or false? A hostile fact checker may rate the first instance false, since there are actually 318+ million. A friendly fact checker will rate the second instance true b&amp;#x2F;c I obviously meant the rate of growth was low by historical standards etc.</text></item><item><author>jawns</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a former journalist, and one of the mistakes I often see people make is to either give too much or not enough credence to whether the facts in a news story (or op-ed) are true.&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if you disregard objective facts because they defy your assumptions or hurt your argument, you&amp;#x27;re deluding yourself.&lt;p&gt;But an argument that uses objectively true and verifiable facts may nevertheless be invalid (i.e. it&amp;#x27;s possible that the premises might be true but the conclusion false).  Similarly, a news story might be entirely factual but still biased.  And in software terms, your unit tests might be fine, but your integration tests still fail.&lt;p&gt;So here&amp;#x27;s what I tell people:&lt;p&gt;Fact checking is like spell check. You know what&amp;#x27;s great about spell check? It can tell me that I&amp;#x27;ve misspeled two words in this sentance. But it will knot alert me too homophones. And even if my spell checker also checks grammar, I might construct a sentence that is entirely grammatical but lets the bathtub build my dark tonsils rapidly, and it will appear error-free.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, you can write an article in which all of the factual assertions are true but irrelevant to the point at hand. Or you can write an article in which the facts are true, but they&amp;#x27;re cherry-picked to support a particular bias. And some assertions are particularly hard to fact-check because even the means of verifying them is disputed.&lt;p&gt;So while fact checking can be useful, it can also be misused, and we need to keep in mind its limitations.&lt;p&gt;In the end, what will serve you best is not some fact checking website, but the ability to read critically, think critically, factor in potential bias, and scrutinize the tickled wombat&amp;#x27;s postage.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;The US has lower unemployment than in 2010, and higher unemployment than in 2000.&amp;quot; Fact.&lt;p&gt;Define &amp;quot;unemployment.&amp;quot; Our labor force participation rate is down from 2010: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;static4.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;image&amp;#x2F;563caf319dd7ccfc418bcbfb-1200-900&amp;#x2F;october-2015-labor-force-participation-rate.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;static4.businessinsider.com&amp;#x2F;image&amp;#x2F;563caf319dd7ccfc418...&lt;/a&gt;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Fact Check now available in Google Search and News</title><url>https://blog.google/products/search/fact-check-now-available-google-search-and-news-around-world/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paulddraper</author><text>It is color? Or colour? Should my English dictionary include &amp;quot;haiku&amp;quot;? What about &amp;quot;teriyaki&amp;quot;? &amp;quot;Shamisen&amp;quot;?  Is it &amp;quot;Internet&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;internet&amp;quot;?&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;Everything has some wiggle room, but both fact checking and spell checking rely on precise rules to a great exent. You just have to recognize when something is really an opinion. Many things on Politifact, etc. are inferences and conclusions composed of facts, but not facts themselves.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Aaron Burr was vice-president of the US in 1803.&amp;quot; Fact.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Sun convert light elements to heavier ones via fusion.&amp;quot; Fact.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It is legal for a licensed gun owner to open-carry in California.&amp;quot; Falsehood.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The US is in an economic depression.&amp;quot; Too vague, can&amp;#x27;t be fact checked.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The US has lower unemployment than in 2010, and higher unemployment than in 2000.&amp;quot; Fact.</text></item><item><author>zeteo</author><text>&amp;gt; Fact checking is like spell check.&lt;p&gt;No it&amp;#x27;s not. Spell checking relies on very precise rules. Fact checking relies on assessing context and, more often than not, the speaker&amp;#x27;s intention.&lt;p&gt;For example, let&amp;#x27;s take the statement &amp;quot;There are 300 million people in the US&amp;quot;. Is this false? Well, it depends where I&amp;#x27;m going with it.&lt;p&gt;If I was only relying on the figure as an approximation, I can say something like &amp;quot;therefore deaths from terrorism only affect 0.0x%, which is not something we should worry a lot about&amp;quot;. This is obviously a factually valid argument, even though you might disagree with the conclusion b&amp;#x2F;c you think other facts are more relevant etc.&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, my argument can also be &amp;quot;and there were 300 million in 2007, therefore the population has been stagnant and we need to do something about it&amp;quot;. This is factually quite false, since the population has in fact increased by ~18M.&lt;p&gt;Now should the original statement &amp;quot;there are 300 million people in the US&amp;quot; be rated true or false? A hostile fact checker may rate the first instance false, since there are actually 318+ million. A friendly fact checker will rate the second instance true b&amp;#x2F;c I obviously meant the rate of growth was low by historical standards etc.</text></item><item><author>jawns</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a former journalist, and one of the mistakes I often see people make is to either give too much or not enough credence to whether the facts in a news story (or op-ed) are true.&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if you disregard objective facts because they defy your assumptions or hurt your argument, you&amp;#x27;re deluding yourself.&lt;p&gt;But an argument that uses objectively true and verifiable facts may nevertheless be invalid (i.e. it&amp;#x27;s possible that the premises might be true but the conclusion false).  Similarly, a news story might be entirely factual but still biased.  And in software terms, your unit tests might be fine, but your integration tests still fail.&lt;p&gt;So here&amp;#x27;s what I tell people:&lt;p&gt;Fact checking is like spell check. You know what&amp;#x27;s great about spell check? It can tell me that I&amp;#x27;ve misspeled two words in this sentance. But it will knot alert me too homophones. And even if my spell checker also checks grammar, I might construct a sentence that is entirely grammatical but lets the bathtub build my dark tonsils rapidly, and it will appear error-free.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, you can write an article in which all of the factual assertions are true but irrelevant to the point at hand. Or you can write an article in which the facts are true, but they&amp;#x27;re cherry-picked to support a particular bias. And some assertions are particularly hard to fact-check because even the means of verifying them is disputed.&lt;p&gt;So while fact checking can be useful, it can also be misused, and we need to keep in mind its limitations.&lt;p&gt;In the end, what will serve you best is not some fact checking website, but the ability to read critically, think critically, factor in potential bias, and scrutinize the tickled wombat&amp;#x27;s postage.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zeteo</author><text>This is pretty naive. Do you think Google is now cross-checking news stories with the encyclopedia entries on vice presidents and nuclear fusion? Please go to factcheck.org, which is what they&amp;#x27;ll actually use. They&amp;#x27;re dealing with stuff that&amp;#x27;s almost exclusively like your item #4, and they&amp;#x27;ll definitely give it ratings. #3 and #5 are also much more open to argument than you want to admit here.</text></comment>