Evaluating evidence is a superlative skill. That is, if one can sift through various claims and find the truth (or at least, the validity of a particular question or issue), one is at a great advantage in this world. Indeed, there are compelling reasons to hold that an ability to see two sides of an argument – both with passionate and seemingly-confident defenders – is a critical skill. Rare though it may be, and challenging as it is, it will pay huge dividends if one can harness this power. In this blog, I will present examples of complex dilemmas that call for a keen mind and an excellent skill set.
I was just thinking about Donald Trump, and the tangled web he has weaved. In a case such as this, evaluating evidence is a high skill. The question as of this writing is starting more and more to resemble Nixon in the waning days of the Watergate scandal, culminating in his ultimate disgrace: resigning prior to impeachment. However, his penultimate act of chicanery and dishonor was the “Saturday night massacre,” so named for the following ignominy (as written by Carroll Kilpatrick in 1973):
“In the most traumatic government upheaval of the Watergate crisis, President Nixon yesterday discharged Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox and accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus.
The President also abolished the office of the special prosecutor and turned over to the Justice Department the entire responsibility for further investigation and prosecution of suspects and defendants in Watergate and related cases.
…Finally, the President turned to Solicitor General Robert H. Bork, who by law becomes acting Attorney General when the Attorney General and deputy attorney general are absent, and he carried out the President’s order to fire Cox.”
I don’t even want to get into the fact that the Republicans nominated Bork for Supreme Court Justice in subsequent years. That appalling fact is beside the point.
What is relevant here is the fact that Nixon went down in history as possibly the most corrupt and brazenly narcissistic president in modern history. Now, Trump appears to be engaged in the same nefarious cover-ups, firings, intimidation, malfeasance, and dereliction of duty – and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Congressman Devin Nunez seem complicit. These shocking acts appear to be attempts to hold on to power at all costs – even at the expense of the institutions that undergird our republic. Here is a summary.
Conservative commentator and author of The Truth Matters, Bruce Bartlett, writes this:
Once upon a time, Americans could read their local newspaper, subscribe to a weekly newsmagazine, and watch thirty minutes of national news on television each night, and be reasonably sure they knew everything important and newsworthy that they needed to know to live their lives. Those days are long gone.
This article cites a study that purports to show that Trump supporters are even more out of touch with truth and accuracy than is the rest of the population – which is saying a lot! I would even say that is it virtually impossible to both have a firm handle on accuracy, small-t truth, and rationality and be a Trump supporter at the present time. Too much has come out, too much evidence as to why he (and his apologists, like Speaker Paul Ryan) is a dangerous demagogue who lies, cheats, and manipulates.
Trump is in a massive fight for his life, with many decent people and much of the media arrayed against him. His moves appear to be Nixonian in their self-servingness and illegitimacy. In a word, he is full of shit and deserves removal from office. But how does one tease apart when two sides claim passionately to be right, to have evidence, and our very institutions are being questioned? I mean, it’s not too farfetched to believe that the highest levels of the U.S. government is in some way derelict or even corrupt – they make movies about this very theme. Men do bad things; Nixon was a thing, for God’s sake! If the CIA will run human experiments and Abu Ghraib and allegedly assassinate numerous foreign (and even domestic?) officials, nothing is beyond the pale.
However, the issue really is: how does one tell? What is the key to evaluating evidence in matters such as these? One faction or another is more truthful than the other, and they are both accusing each other. This is a key reason why Trump makes such a big deal out of Twitter and alleging that the media is biased, duplicitous, and “fake” – because he wants to engender skepticism or even cynicism that our institutions are trustworthy; there is alleged to be a “Deep State” that runs everything and is utterly unscrupulous – like the “cigarette smoking men” in The X-Files. In my opinion, only he wants to be trusted; he will tell us what we need to know, and we ought to believe him. As though his credibility is sound! It reeks of propaganda. I can’t say that the FBI hasn’t done shady things, or that Congressmen haven’t acted appallingly, or that the Deep State is complete nonsense. That is to say: those things are not technically and totally untrue. Washington D.C. is run by money and power, and it’s a dirty, obnoxious, frightening place.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. ~ Thomas Jefferson
Well, I suppose you can tell how I come down on this issue. When it comes to evaluating evidence, I think that Trump, Fox News, Jeff Sessions, Devin Nunez, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and the lot of them are liars and villains. I think it is a wholesale coup that was engineered by the GOP, by Russian meddlers, and by certain Congresspeople. But, as stated, some of the things that Trump claims has a possible basis in reality. It’s as though he is sowing doubt and dissent for his own purposes, and the GOP has attached itself to his fortunes. They either all sink, or all swim. They must drown the Democrats, the media, the FBI, the DoJ, and two-thirds of the American public, or they drown. It’s an all-out fight for their political lives.
But, from a philosophical point of view, when it comes to evaluating evidence, one cannot say that it is a surety that the case against Trump is true, or 100% true. It’s all very confusing. That is the point, I suppose: run interference, sow doubt, delegitimize the Special Counsel, rally the base, protect the President, protect the GOP in the next election, protect the agenda. It reminds me of those young black males you see in the television show “48 Hours,” or the dummies who get themselves featured on an episode of “COPS.” Have you seen those shows? They are being questioned by law enforcement for murder, or running, or drug possession, and they claim this lame story about how “Oh, that’s not mine!” or “I was never there!” It’s not far from “He did it, not me!” that a young child claims when caught. It’s just enough to give cover and apparent plausibility to the detractors of the media, the Democrats, and social liberals (i.e., Trump’s base, the Tea Party, and the alt-Right); they can point to a Fox News report, or a Washington Times article, or a Breitbart claim and say, “See! The liberal media is trying to bring down the president!” It’s very tribal and non-rational in nature.
To become informed and hold government accountable, the general public needs to obtain news that is comprehensive yet interesting and understandable, that conveys facts and outcomes, not cosmetic images and airy promises. But that is not what the public demands. ~ Eric Alterman
I have considered the principles of evaluating evidence with chiropractic vs. mainstream medicine, alternative medicine vs. mainstream medicine, UFOs, ESP, sexual harassment claims, the sexual abuse scandal of the Catholic Church, various other scandals of the Catholic Church in bygone eras, vaccinations vs. vaccine refusal (and, relatedly, the issues of the legitimacy of the Federal government and pharmaceutical industries and pediatricians and public health officials and the mainstream media), when a cop says he was threatened and had to kill an unarmed suspect, and so on. It really does take extraordinary discretion, care, and, as Nietzsche wrote, will:
“This unconditional will to truth—what is it? Is it the will not to allow oneself to be deceived? Or is it the will not to deceive? …”I do not want to deceive myself” is subsumed under the generalization “I do not want to deceive.” …Note that the reasons for the former principle belong to an altogether different realm from those for the second. One does not want to allow oneself to be deceived because one assumes that it is harmful, dangerous, calamitous to be deceived.”
None of this is a slam-dunk for me, let alone the average Joe, who doesn’t do all that well at critical thinking and evaluating evidence. For example, books like this one, Why People Believe Weird Things, highlight how many people do hold unsubstantiated and irrational beliefs. When a counterforce is involved against a truth claim, it can be confusing – especially if there is a lot of money behind them (think: cigarettes in the past, or environmental damage and climate change now). Thank You for Smoking is an amazing look at expertise, legitimacy, truth, lobbying, money, power, and belief. Wag the Dog is the same idea. Rachel Carson and Silent Spring and Erin Brokovitch/Erin Brokovitch are good examples of powerful interests fighting the truth. Don’t forget All the President’s Men. Heck, there is even a well-documented book entitled Lies My Teacher Told Me. Or The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. This can all be very dispiriting, even leading to nihilism. Look at Nietzsche’s attitude in mid-life!
Here is a great article about beliefs Americans hold that just don’t hold water. Over a third of Americans believe that God created the Earth in 6 days about 6,000 years ago, and that evolution doesn’t account for human beings. As well:
Last week, the Gallup Organization released a poll suggesting that, on average, Americans estimate one in four people in this country to be gay or lesbian. If that number seems high, it’s not just you. Calculations of the population vary, but most recent surveys place the percentage of gay and lesbian Americans at around 3.5 percent.
According to polls, 76 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Yet significantly fewer can identify central facts about the faith. According to the Pew Forum’s Religious Survey, only 45 percent know who the Gospels are attributed to: Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Evaluating evidence is complicated because tribalism, pseudoscience, egoism, pattern recognition in the human brain, emotions, and various psychological biases affect one’s ability to reason successfully and discover, determine, and deduce true facts. Confirmation bias and the bandwagon effect are interesting ones. Here are 23 other “cognitive biases” and rational errors that complicate evaluating evidence.
Look how deeply disturbing this is to the rational person intent on evaluating evidence:
…there are good scientific reasons to think that lots of published research is actually false. In 2005, a research professor named John Ioannidis published a much-cited paper titled: ‘Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,’ in which he showed how the pressures of academic life, the small size of many scientific studies, and the preference for unexpected findings mean that even premier journals are surprisingly likely to publish findings that just aren’t true
This guideline about evaluating evidence is somewhat more optimistic and reassuring, but still gives me the feeling I get when I am lacing up my running shoes, facing a workout:
He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
Sean Stevens of the interesting website Heterodox Academy, writes an interesting article about a key skill/virtue: intellectual humility. He presents an illuminating study, and begins the review with: “Political polarization and animosity towards political rivals are on the rise in the United States. Trust in the press and other institutions is declining, and social media appears to exacerbate these problems. The possibility of a second Civil War has been raised in more than a few places. Needless to say, finding ways to reduce the simmering tensions is tantamount.” The main hypothesis of a study he cites is notable:
“We propose that people who are high in intellectual humility might be less closed off to opposing perspectives because they are more willing to admit their intellectual fallibility and see intellectual merit in others’ ideas. Compared to those who are low in intellectual humility, we anticipate that those higher in intellectual humility will make more respectful attributions for why someone holds opposing views (e.g., because the issues being discussed are complex), and will be more open to learning about the perspectives of others, even if those perspectives are in direct opposition to their own.”
Steven Novella, M.D. put out a whole lecture series called “Your Deceptive Mind” and refers to many cognitive biases, errors of perception, confabulation, beliefs in the irrational, tendencies in humans toward mistaken reasoning, conspiracy thinking, and constructed reality. There is even a real thing: mass delusions. Hell, one stunning example is that the author of the Sherlock Holmes novels fell victim to a ruse developed by two schoolgirls! Not even kidding. It can be a bit disconcerting and even overwhelming.
In his interesting book The Believing Brain, author Michael Shermer has a few really good quotes, including this one: “What is the probability that Yahweh is the one true god, and Amon Ra, Aphrodite, Apollo, Baal, Brahma, Ganesha, Isis, Mithra, Osiris, Shiva, Thor, Vishnu, Wotan, Zeus, and the other 986 gods are false gods? As skeptics like to say, everyone is an atheist about these gods; some of us just go one god further.” Wow. Here as well: “Reality exists independent of human minds, but our understanding of it depends upon the beliefs we hold at any given time.” Bravo. More Americans believe in the virgin birth of the resurrected son of God, Jesus Christ, than in climate change. Not even kidding. Here is a source.
We must not confuse what we desire with what is the case; we must continue to base our beliefs on the evidence and reasons, to calibrate our degree of belief according to the evidence. ~ Robert Nozick
One must be careful getting news from “mainstream” sources of news because even the biggest providers are owned by 7 megacorporations such as Viacom and Disney. Newspapers also are very questionable. As well, blogs written by amateurs and hearsay may be compelling, but can just create an echo chamber for one’s preferred views and prejudices. It isn’t that hard to become a complete victim to confirmation bias in the Internet age. Here are a few recommendations when it comes to evaluating evidence and getting facts and truth from the media:
- https://www.factcheck.org,
- http://www.politifact.com and to some degree,
- https://www.snopes.com.
- I also find The Week, Democracy Now!, BillMoyers.com, Mother Jones, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly (and The Masthead by the Atlantic Monthly), and to some degree The New Republic are good to great. I suppose The New Yorker and Vanity Fair have some good writing but I just never read them.
- Nouriel Roubini is a reputable economist. I also like RobertReich.org. I think Michael Kinsley wrote some notable things but stopped a while back. Of course, we still read the Bible, so that’s not to say his stuff is useless. Same with Christopher Hitchens and Lionel Trilling.
- The books What Liberal Media?, The Fact Checker’s Bible, Weaponized Lies, Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload, and the book The Truth Matters are worthy and useful. I actually can’t say enough good things about Bartlett’s The Truth Matters. The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in America would no doubt be enlightening, but it’s very expensive.
- One word: skepticism. Here is the source. As Michael Shermer put it: “I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe, but because I want to know.” Michael, the truth is out there (cue the X-Files theme)…
- Though Time, Newsweek, VICE, and RealClearPolitics are okay for the most part, big outlets such as MSNBC, CNN, Meet the Press, US News & World Report, The Times, The Post, and major news stations must be taken with a pound of salt, especially since they are so “establishment.” After watching the movie The Post, it is clear to me that newspapers have a huge task: put out great articles every day and get none of them wrong. Obviously, even a 99% success rate will allow dozens of misstated facts and lies to escape fact-checking and editing. When a company is overly concerned with “how something is going to play” with the public, advertisers, or the government, obviously that muddies the water. The Times has advertisement after advertisement, and The Post is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and those facts raise serious questions.
- Sources such as The Guardian, Reuters, The Economist, and The Associated Press are decent. One has to pay to access some sites, though in this world, it might be worth it.
- Harry Frankfurt’s short philosophical piece On Bullshit is obviously a very compelling read, and is a NY Times bestseller, for what it’s worth. The publishers describe it thusly: “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, ‘we have no theory.’
- I quite like Lisa Ling’s This Is Life, The Young Turks, Common Dreams, Thom Hartmann, The Daily Show, and the weekly in-depth comedy report, Last Week Tonight. I miss The Colbert Report and Jon Stewart. With Bill Maher and shows like Steven Colbert’s late-night, what you see is what you get. Three of my favorite broadcasters are Don Lemon, Andrew Cuomo, and I even like Joe Scarborough. Fareed Zakaria and his GPS are reputable (with one reservation).
- I of course stay away from stuff like Fox News, The Weekly Standard, and USA Today. Breitbart and Louder with Crowder aren’t worth the cost of the electricity to call up the sites.
- There are a lot of lies and deceit on the political right, especially now, and Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is an absolute slaughter of the likes of Rush Limbaugh – from whom a startling number of Americans get information and opinion.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Bureau of Economic Research, History News Network, Guidestar, and Google Scholar are potential sources of information. Pew Research is supposedly pretty legitimate. The Brookings Institution is pretty nonpartisan and professional.
- I also use www.StartPage.com when searching on the web due to privacy concerns with Google.
- One has to be careful of sites such as WebMD, Dr. Mercola, and Dr. Oz because they sell products. One can be an unbiased expert and sell products, conceivably, and my mother for one stands by Dr. Mercola.
Author and former government official Bruce Bartlett suggests this as the final parting words to his short, stout book: “In the end, the best defense against fake news are critical thinking; taking in news from a variety of sources, including those that don’t confirm your own biases; being skeptical about information that sounds too good (or bad) to be true; and other self-defenses.”
This only barely scratches the surface of what is obviously a complicated and nuanced topic. It takes dedication, courage, and will to seek out, investigate, and feel undogmatically firm about facts. Hopefully, you know I don’t have a dog in the fight; I’m trying to help understand the process of evaluating evidence and parsing truth claims. I can, however, provide some interesting thoughts from folks besides myself – quotations about truth, evidence, rationality, facts, decision-making, belief, and of course, evaluating evidence. You too can look up your own quotes about rationality and such here in The Wisdom Archive, one heckuva searchable quotations database and quote search engine. Best to you!
Here is a similar blog about evaluating evidence and critical thinking.
And now, the quotes:
How many times do you hear it?
It goes on all day long
Everyone knows everything
And no one’s ever wrong
…
Who can you believe?
It’s hard to play it safe
But apart from a few good friends
We don’t take anything on faith…. ~ Neil Peart
“In the long run, political parties and movements are best served by truth, accuracy, and responsible news reporting. It may be that this needs to be subsidized in some way. The federal government has long done this by giving newspapers and magazines subsidized mailing rates, and radio and television stations were given extremely valuable spectrum for literally nothing.” ~ Bruce Bartlett
“Calling the President of the United States a liar is not something I say with any relish or satisfaction. I wish with all my heart that our President wasn’t a liar, or if he were, that he was more like President Clinton.”
“The methods of increasing the degree of truth in our beliefs are well known; they consist in hearing all sides, trying to ascertain all the relevant facts, controlling our own bias by discussion with people who have the opposite bias, and cultivating a readiness to discard any hypothesis which has proved inadequate. These methods are practiced in science, and have built up the body of scientific knowledge.”
“Then there are those who have argued that all our beliefs about the gods have been fabricated by wise men for reasons of state, so that men whom reason could not persuade to be good citizens might be persuaded by religion. Have not these also totally destroyed the foundation of belief?”
“An uncertain and doubting mind leads to fresh world visions and the possibility of new and ever-changing realities.” ~ Michael Shermer
“We seem to continue to expect intelligence and knowledge to predict rational behavior, as if rationality was some kind of byproduct of intelligence. Even skeptics can often be caught suggesting that if we just give people the right facts, they’ll change their minds about vaccines, E.S.P., and global warming. But that is not how people work.”
“Be comfortable with uncertainty. There are some things we simply cannot know or that we currently do not know. There may be times when, after reviewing all the logic and evidence, our only conclusion is that we currently don’t know.”
“Government secrecy is not for security reasons, overwhelmingly it’s just to prevent the population from knowing what’s going on. I mean, a lot of secret internal documents get declassified after thirty years or so, and if you look over the entire long record of them, there’s virtually nothing in there that ever had any security-related concern.”
“Knowledge is properly justified true belief.”
“When reading or listening to any news report, we must evaluate the underlying source of the information to determine its truth or veracity. By underlying source, I don’t necessarily mean the reporter or the news organization; rather, we must determine whether the reporting relies on someone with direct personal knowledge or the report is basically hearsay — something heard elsewhere by someone who cannot vouch for its truth.” ~ Bruce Bartlett
“The experience of doubt in a heterogeneous, cosmopolitan world is a bit like being lost in a forest, unendingly beckoned by a thousand possible routes. …The initial horror of being lost utterly disappears when you come to believe fully that there is no town out there, beyond the forest, to which you are headed.”
“…we should reward skepticism and disbelief, and champion those willing to change their mind in the teeth of new evidence. Instead, most social institutions — most notably those in religion, politics, and economics — reward belief in the doctrines of the faith or party or ideology, punish those who challenge the authority of the leaders, and discourage uncertainty and especially skepticism.” ~ Michael Shermer
“A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.”
“I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.”
“What are principles we can trust? What method do we have that will ensure that we only acquire (as much as possible) true beliefs and not false ones? This is the stuff of epistemology.”
“Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.”
“Our emotions enable us to perform actions more promptly and easily than rationality alone; if controlled by reason, our emotions can actually intensify our moral life.”
“Convictions can best be supported with experience and clear thinking.”
“I want to foster the capacity of ‘moral intelligence’ as much as, or more than, a specific set of moral beliefs. Thoughtfulness, if you will.”
“The postmodernist belief in the relativism of truth, coupled with the clicker culture of mass media, in which attention spans are measured in New York minutes, leaves us with a bewildering array of truth claims packaged in infotainment units.” ~ Michael Shermer
“Our brains are belief machines. We are motivated to believe — especially those things that we want to believe. The default mode of human psychology is to arrive at beliefs for largely emotional reasons and then to employ our reason — more to justify those beliefs than to modify or arrive at them.”
“…Plato believed once we’ve seen the light, we have an obligation to enlighten others. We can’t retreat into our cave of illusions. We must face reality as it truly is, and lead others out of the darkness–no matter how painful that proves to be.”
“Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”
Again, marvelous quotations about truth, evidence, rationality, facts, decision-making, belief, and evaluating evidence can be found in The Wisdom Archive