Fake News: Spinning and
Winning
“Truth crushed to
earth, shall rise again” (William Cullen Bryant)
In Nelson Goodman’s (1954), Fact Fiction and Forecast, the notion of projectible predication arises to differentiate hypotheses based on regularities well grounded in experience and those which are not. There is a parallel treatment of counterfactuals (If X, then Y, and not-x, as in “If this thing in my hand was made of copper, it would conduct electricity but it is actually a wooden popsicle stick”) involving relationships well-grounded in experience and those which are not. What might we say about facts, fictions, and forecasts, in educational research or in the current political climate?
What are
some facts in the area of educational research? A study by the 2014 Program for
the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) involving 33
countries shows that 7 of those countries scored significantly higher on a
literacy scale and six scored significant lower (measured understanding,
evaluating, using and engaging with written text) than the USA and the USA was
slightly below the average (see https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=69).
Here is an
associated counterfactual claim: If an adult person M (say that is me – an American)
is a lifelong resident of Japan, then M is more likely to be literate than N
(where N is an adult American picked at random). Is that counterfactual claim
reasonable?
Here is another
claim supported by extensive educational research: Directive feedback
(providing corrective information) tends to work well with learners new to a topic
or domain whereas facilitative feedback (providing guidance and cues) tends to work well
with more advanced learners (Shute, 2007; see https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/RR-07-11.pdf).
Now, suppose that P is a learner new to the domain of logic and epistemology (me,
for instance – my dissertation was in that area) and someone claims that P is
more likely to benefit from directive feedback in the area of logic than Q (a middle
school student in rural Alabama). Is that a reasonable claim?
One way to
treat counterfactuals (IF-Then claims with the IF-clause clearly false) is to
dismiss them as trivial or even meaningless. Yet some seem to make sense to
some people. Other counterfactuals can be used to make jokes as in: “If I knew
everything, then I would know _______________ .” I forgot to mention that this
was a pop quiz. How did you fill in the blank? I used this phrase: “… then I
would know where parallel lines meet.” Math humor is not so humorous to very
many people.
On to
fictions. I just love fictions. Sometimes I think about my training in
philosophy … one of my professors said that the never-ending business of
philosophy was to help us understand the boundaries between sense and nonsense.
My own take on philosophy is that it is a kind of thought in slow motion. Fictions
– claims that do not hold up under scrutiny. Scrutiny is when you close one eye
and take a closer look for those of you taking notes. There are some blatant
fictions as this one I discovered in a book on medieval logic: “I just ate the last
cannibal” spoken in a group of monks who had taken vows of silence. Bouwsma’s
(one of my professors) example was this: “I just suffered a fatal heart attack.”
There are
many less blatant fictions. Here is one: “Humans only came to the Grand Canyon
area about 4,000 years ago.” Here is another one: “All of the fossils found in
the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies were fossils of creatures still
living somewhere.” Consider this one: “There is no evidence that human
activities contribute to climate change.” Some people believe what they want to
believe and are reluctant to take a closer look at evidence or consider
alternative perspectives or beliefs. There is a difference between advocacy for
something and evidence supporting something. A critical issue concerns the
nature of good and compelling evidence. Just as there is a fuzzy boundary
between sense and nonsense, the boundary between advocacy and research is
somewhat fuzzy.
Just as
counterfactuals turn out to be somewhat problematic, there is another kind of
IF-THEN claim that is also problematic. I call it an unconditional conditional
and it has the general form of If X, then Y, where no matter what is put in for
X the person making the unconditional conditional claim will maintain the truth
of Y. No refutation of the unconditional conditional is considered possible. In
such a case, one cannot conclude that Y is a fiction … one can only walk away
from the unreasonable challenge of the advocate of the unconditional
conditional in trying to offer evidence that Y or the unconditional conditional
with Y as the then-clause may not be true.
Does this
ever happen in educational research? In medical research? In political
discourse? The challenge of finding examples in each of those categories is
left to the reader – this is the mid-term exam. Hint – the answer to the first set
of three questions is ‘yes’ – this does
not constitute timely nor informative feedback. It is merely encouragement to
keep on keeping’ on.
When you
have completed the mid-term exam, you may want to continue on to forecasts. My
forecast is that some of you will pass the mid-term. After all, it was a take-home
exam … or take-to-the-bathroom exam.
Having said
a few things about IF-THEN claims, it seems natural to apply some of that
discussion to forecasts, as these often come in the form of complex IF-THEN
statements, such as:” “If W, and X and Y, then Z” – W might refer to the learning
or instructional context and X might refer to the students or teachers and Y might
refer to the intervention or treatment. Obviously, each of the parts of the
complex IF clause could be compound, which means that the forecast result Z
depends on a conjunction of a set of
contributing factors. If Z does not occur, the advocate of Z is likely to look
for one or more deficiencies in the set of contributing factors. Another
approach is to construct a replication study or a revised version to see if Z
might occur. Yet another approach is to revise Z and conduct a replication
study. Forecasting or predicting and then confirming or refuting or refining is
not easy … it is what scientists and meteorologists and other investigators are
trained to do.
I have a
vague memory of reading Fact, Fiction and
Forecast about 45 years ago. I was fascinated by the concept of the
hypothetical predicate ‘grue’ for things that are green before some future date
and blue after that date. At this time, ‘all emeralds are green’ and 'all
emeralds are grue’ are both true and confirmed by the same evidence. However,
few believe that after that future date that emeralds will all be blue. I also
realized that I did not understand what a meteorologist meant by a forecast of
40% chance of rain. Was it that 40% of the area covered by the forecast would
surely receive rain, or that any random spot in the forecast area would have a
40% chance of rain or that it will rain 40% of the day or ??? Forecasting still
bewilders me. I recall a sports enthusiast being asked to predict the outcome
of an event about to begin. The sports enthusiast replied “Let’s just watch and
see what happens.” My respect for sports enthusiasts rose significantly that
day.
I suppose we
need a final exam since we have had a pop quiz and a mid-term exam. The final
exam is a single multiple choice question:
- There is someone in this room who loves all and only those persons in this room who do not love themselves.
- Never in the course of human history have events so resembled the present as they now do.
- It is a fact that X leaked Y but that fact is fake news
- There are an even number of planets in the Milky Way galaxy
- If X is a human being, then X knows less than X is typically inclined to believe that X knows.
- More than one of the above is true
- More than one of the above is false.
Truth? What
is truth? I will go where you go, answered Ruth. My trumpet is louder than yours
so follow me said someone else. The truth they are telling might only be the
truth that is selling. And the slow one now will later be fast said the Nobel laureate.
