Fact-checking against pseudoscientific hoaxes: why journalism is not about giving voice to both sides but about telling the data and evidence and uncovering the lies

Keys:

• In the face of lies that attack public health, journalism is not interviewing «both sides.»
• The conspiracy theorists and coronavirus deniers are advancing and their lies must stop.
• The cure against misinformation is critical thinking and education; While they arrive, journalism is the best vaccine.
• There is evidence that fact-checking works: studies show that citizens pay attention to data verifications.
• At Maldita.es we have debunked more than 700 hoaxes and have published more than 1,100 explanatory articles about COVID-19.

The battle against pseudoscientific hoaxes and misinformation about health has been more important than ever in recent months. At Maldita.es we believe that critical thinking and education are the best cure against these lies, but in the meantime journalism with the help of the community is the vaccine to win and ensure, together, that they do not lie to us. 

In the face of lies that attack public health, journalism is not interviewing “both sides” 

Journalism has a responsibility in how it carries out verification: the same weight cannot be given to those who spread the hoax as to those who deny it with data , facts and knowledge based on scientific evidence. 

Interviewing a spreader of lies and then a scientist specialized in that area of ​​knowledge means putting both on the same level in the argument, giving the first a weight that it does not deserve and, there, giving more visibility to their unfounded theories. .

Journalism has to be responsible and not give a voice to those who spread these hoaxes. On Friday, July 31, TVE News reported the statements of Natalia Prego, known for spreading false information about the pandemic, and then denied them with statements by Juan Antonio López Guerrero, biologist and popularizer. 

On August 31, Espejo Público interviewed PIlar Baselga, a well-known conspiracy theorist and denier of the epidemic. The program used our denials, but after years of dedicating ourselves to this, we can say that lies should not be given a loudspeaker. That same day Baselga also appeared on the program Todo es Mentira .

On September 8, TVE’s Newscast mentioned the alert from the Toxicological Information Service about the consumption of MMS , a toxic compound that does not cure COVID-19 (or anything), but included in its piece statements by Josep Pamiés, a well-known for promoting its use against all scientific evidence. Pamiés has been sanctioned by the Generalitat for promoting the use of pseudotherapies to cure diseases.

The conspiracy theorists and coronavirus deniers are advancing and their lies must be stopped

Many of these hoax spreaders question social distancing measures, the origin of the virus, and the usefulness and safety of masks , a key object in the fight against the pandemic. These doubts endanger us all. Since the confinement began, masks in particular have been the protagonists of countless hoaxes distributed millions of times on different platforms. 

For example, those spread by Judy Mikovits. Mikovits was the protagonist of three viral videos full of falsehoods about the coronavirus, masks, and vaccines ( here we deny one, here another and here the third). Maybe her name doesn’t sound familiar to you and you think that by dismantling the falsehoods she says we are giving them more visibility, that it would be better to ignore her completely. But searching for her name on YouTube we found that those two videos, and others in which she repeats the same false conspiracy theories, together have hundreds of thousands of views. 

The same thing happens with the denialist association Médicos por la verdad : both its videos, as well as those in which only one of its spokespersons, Natalia Prego, appears, have hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube and shares on Facebook. 

The evidence that fact-checking works exists

That some people do not find them in their networks does not mean that they only reach very small groups, but that in the networks we each live within our bubble and perhaps we are not coming across them. 

Precisely the objective of fact-checking is to serve as a brake on its expansion. We know that there are people who will never be convinced by facts, data and explanations. The reality is that these are influencing people who are not positioned , but if they only receive hoaxes and not data and facts, they may end up believing the lies.

There are several scientific studies and experiments that show that correcting these errors works. In 2017, two researchers from Georgetown and George Mason universities carried out an experiment around misinformation about the Zika virus in Brazil and the effect that denials about it had on users on Facebook. The conclusion? They are effective “ in limiting misperceptions, and correction occurs for both high and low conspiracy belief individuals .” 

The usual argument is that fact-checking triggers confirmation bias in users . Whether we are talking about politics or pseudoscience, there is a belief that when you tell someone who has believed a hoax that it is a lie, you are actually helping to confirm their beliefs and that therefore verification is useless. Again, there is academic evidence available that points to the opposite.

In an experiment carried out in 2016 around this idea of ​​confirmation bias, 8,100 subjects were subjected to fact-checks made to politicians on 36 different topics. Only one of those 36 verifications caused a counterproductive effect to be triggered. The researchers’ conclusion was that

«in general, citizens pay attention to factual information , even when such information challenges their partisan and ideological commitments.»

And it’s not the only one. More examples here , here and here. 

Verification as a vaccine

If we do not deny them, if we do not appear in this search for the truth, those who misinform will end up convincing more and more people. Or at least creating doubts due to the conspiracy bombardment. 

Our goal is that along with their hoaxes there is verified information to vaccinate us against them and the sooner the better . If our denial reaches you before the hoax, we will have gained ground.

The most effective vaccine against lies is not us: it is critical thinking and the education of citizens in the management of solid and reliable information. But that is a process that will take more time. Meanwhile, fact-checking journalism together with the community is the key to stopping hoaxes.

Faced with hoaxes: verification during the pandemic

At Maldita.es we have worked hard during the pandemic and that translates into more than 700 debunked hoaxes about all aspects related to the disease, the state of alarm, the lack of confinement, the political perspective, etc. But adding all the explanatory articles that we have published in these months the figure exceeds 1,100 . They are all collected in this special .

We have done it with the help of Maldita’s community , which has sent us dubious content that has been found on networks or that has reached them via WhatsApp. Thanks to that and the collaboration of experts and medical and scientific societies that have the knowledge to explain and transmit the most solid and reliable information with which to make better decisions, we can fight against lies.

We have also worked in different formats to reach as wide an audience as possible: the weekly Maldita la Hora podcast , collaborations in media such as Telemadrid or Radio Nacional , and a street-level campaign with posters designed by Yo, Doctor artists placed in the bus shelters of 55 Spanish municipalities to raise awareness about the correct use of masks against the coronavirus. We have also participated in workshops, talks and virtual seminars through our Maldita Educa branch, because we believe that education is the true cure against misinformation. Within this educational effort we have also launched the board game Truth or Hoax? Coronavirus edition .

Finally, we are aware that misinformation is not an exclusively Spanish problem , so we have joined forces with other fact-checkers. As a result of collaboration with European verifiers, we have published a report on how disinformation has moved through Europe during the pandemic, which you can consult here . We are also part of Latam Chequea , a union of 22 organizations in 15 Spanish-speaking countries to stop the infodemic.

For all this, we know that the fight against disinformation during the pandemic is an important but delicate task and that if it is not done well it can have the opposite effect of what we are looking for: giving more visibility to disinformers than they already have. Journalism is the best way to win this battle against hoaxes, but being responsible and understanding that lies should have no place in the public space .