Overview

Alien remains found in Roswell, New Mexico. Become a millionaire overnight. Elvis is alive and well.

We are subject to a daily barrage of misleading claims. Most of us are immune to the more outlandish ones. But even the most skeptical among us sometimes fall prey to deceptive information, especially if it tells us what we want to hear. Want to lose weight without diet or exercise just by taking a pill? Would you invest in a "guaranteed" hot stock?

The Internet has already influenced our culture by opening the floodgates to marginal information, half-truths, or extremist views. Should we regard all information on the 'Net as suspect? As a basic presumption, that is not a bad idea, but it risks throwing the baby out with the bath water. The Internet has displaced all the traditional gatekeepers of credibility, the editors, the fact-checkers. Some argue that those people had become power-brokers guarding hardened arteries of influence as if it were turf to be protected from the riff-raff. Now everyone with a soapbox can have his or her say. How can you possibly discern 'truth?'

The scientific method itself was developed for a climate of openness and is dependent on it. The method does not confer automatic authority; it exists to ensure that experiments can be replicated. Only in a climate of openness can such verification take place.

Yet the marketplace of ideas today is not ruled by openness. Drug companies and other commercial ventures with potentially valuable patents conduct the better part of their research in secret. Even the majority of government research is conducted in secret. Only by exercising critical thinking skills can we be reasonably sure of avoiding becoming victims of misleading information. Learning to evaluate sources and evidence, interpret findings, and use clear reasoning are the best defenses against being duped.