Fake News and Lazy Journalism

Earlier this year I wrote about the huge upsurge in Fake News Stories circulating on social media. The Snopes website is very good at identifying and debunking these stories, and a few days ago they had an interesting article on Fake News Sites to Avoid Sharing (from which the above graphic is taken). The first paragraph emphasizes the cynical financial motive behind most of these “fake news” stories:

The sharp increase in popularity of social media networks (primarily Facebook) has created a predatory secondary market among online publishers seeking to profitably exploit the large reach of those networks [...] and a number of frequent offenders regularly fabricate salacious and attention-grabbing tales simply to drive traffic (and revenue) to their site.

There’s another factor at play though, besides deliberate fake news sites. That’s lazy journalism by mainstream media, who often repeat a far-fetched claim without attempting to check up on its background and credibility. There was a good example of this last week (admittedly a slow news week here in the UK, what with the General Election) when several tabloids chose to run the “Roswell Slides” story at face value:

• “REVEALED: Images of Roswell ALIEN found in wreckage of crashed UFO almost 70 years ago” (Daily Express, 6 May 2015)
• “Is this evidence of alien life? New Roswell photos prove ‘beyond any doubt’ that ET exists, claim UFO specialists” (Daily Mail, 7 May 2015)

In fact the images in question look less like a dead alien in a government laboratory than a child mummy in a public museum (which is what they almost certainly do show). But if the papers had said that, they wouldn’t have sold as many copies.

The latest issue of Animals & Men magazine (issue 53, May 2015) contains a letter from me on another example of lazy journalism with a Fortean flavour. You can read the whole issue online for free (my letter is on pp. 70-71), but here is the gist of what I said:

[...] The mainstream media appear to judge the newsworthiness of Fortean-type stories not by their credibility but by their outrageousness. A case in point was the “Whitstable giant crab” you mentioned on page 25 of Issue 52. This started out as a whimsical piece of artwork in issue 301 of Fortean Times (May 2013), which was a special tribute issue to the actor Peter Cushing on the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Whitstable was Cushing’s adopted home, and the magazine included a lighthearted feature on “Weird Whitstable”. The article was the work of artist Quinton Winter, and the idea that a giant crab can be seen on Google Earth images of Whitstable was just one of his inventions. Sadly, however, it seems that people these days simply aren’t wired up to understand irony. In October 2014, it was reported as a genuine news story in the Sunday Express, soon followed by several other tabloids including the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. Within days, the story of “Crabzilla”, as it became known, had gone viral on social media around the world! (Source: Fortean Times issue 321, December 2014, page 2).

Satire and the Internet

Ed Snowden is one of the great heroes of our time. Or maybe he’s one of the great villains. But despite the range of views on the subject, few people doubt that the government secrets he’s released are indeed true. That’s if, like me, you get your facts from old-fashioned “reputable sources” like the BBC and the Guardian. But there’s a whole generation now who get their news from Facebook shares and similar social media. And for them, Ed Snowden is one of the great clowns of our time.

On 5 July, Snowden revealed the truth about UFOs: “There is a species more intelligent than homo sapiens living in the mantle of the Earth. It makes sense, if you think about it, because that is the only place where conditions have been more or less stable for billions of years... The president receives daily briefings about their activities. Analysts believe their technology to be so far advanced that we stand little chance of survival in any potential war. The general sentiment is that we are but ants from their perspective.”

On 10 July, Snowden “released documents... proving that the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, is definitively engaged in a program of assassination and mind control.” The following day, 11 July, Snowden uncovered “the shocking truth behind Chemtrails” (HAARP and Chemtrails have been mainstays of hardcore conspiracy theory for the last two decades, although they’re not particularly well known to the public at large).

On 16 July Snowden revealed the existence of “a fleet of undercover prototype cars equipped with long-range neuroimaging sensors” that “carve carefully planned routes through urban and suburban centers, collecting detailed brain scans of sleeping citizens” in order to “determine whether your dreams indicate a subversive mindset”. This may sound like something out of a novel by Philip K. Dick, but it’s pretty mild compared with “Snowden’s greatest leak” that came a few days earlier (12 July): “God, according to documents released by Snowden, is a mechanic living in Cuthbert Georgia who goes by the name of Wilbur Mercer... Snowden quickly determined that our universe exists inside of a video game system which is owned and used by Mr. Mercer.”

Wilbur Mercer, of course, is the name of a character in Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and the image of “Wilbur Mercer” accompanying the article is in fact a photograph of Dick himself. Although many people will have encountered these Ed Snowden stories via second or third order Facebook shares, they are all ultimately derived (as you can see from my links) from the Internet Chronicle – which is one of a number of popular websites devoted to satire.

Satire has been around since ancient times, and for most of its history people never had much trouble recognizing it for what it is. Partly this is a self-selection effect. The only people who would have been exposed to satire—which after all is essentially a branch of literature—would have been relatively sophisticated, educated individuals who knew what they were letting themselves in for. But the rise of the internet and social media has seen a sudden democratization of the written word. I suspect that many Facebook users don’t even have the word “satire” in their vocabulary, any more than other literary terms like “semicolon” or “metaphor”. Everyone understands what humour and fiction are, so there’s no problem with works of satire that obviously fall in one or both these categories. The trouble starts when you get on to the kind of deadpan satire in which the humorous content is subtle and the fiction is presented as fact.

The phenomenon actually goes back to before the days of the internet. Last year I did a post about Ronald Knox’s First Radio Hoax, way back in 1926. It seems clear to me that Knox never thought of his broadcast as a hoax at all, but as a piece of outrageous satire. He simply overestimated the intellectual sophistication of certain segments of the listening public (not to mention the media).

One of the newsfeeds I follow avidly is “New Urban Legends” from snopes.com. As they repeatedly emphasize, “no satire can be so obvious that someone won’t take it literally”. Scarcely a week goes by without some pretty far-fetched story being debunked with the information that (a) it originated on a website that specializes in satirical content, and (b) it was subsequently “circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered the item mistaking it for a genuine news article”.

The great majority of the satirical pieces that go viral on social media revolve around the perennially dull subject (for us non-Americans) of U.S. politics. That’s even true of the Ed Snowden stories mentioned above, despite their superficial veneer of coolness (e.g. UFOs). But I came across one notable exception a few days ago: “Bow Valley flooding exposes rotting carcass of a Sasquatch. Legendary Cryptid believed to be a surviving Gigantopithecus”. The article comes complete with a photograph and some quotes by credible-sounding experts. One of these is named as “Coren Lowman” – a play on “Loren Coleman” that will sound warning bells for cryptozoological insiders, but probably won’t register with the casual reader.

Sadly, the whole thing is spoiled by the disclaimer at the bottom of the piece: “The above article is SATIRE. This article is provided as humour and any article, image or photograph held out as news is satirical and faux in nature and does not reflect the actions, statements or event of real persons.” Even so, I saw the item linked as “real news” a couple of times on Facebook. Perhaps the most worrying thing about the article is that it actually sounds more credible—with a better understanding of zoology and natural history—than most of the Bigfoot-related news items I’ve seen on the web this year!

Bumblebee Aerodynamics

There is a hackneyed saying to the effect that “scientists have proved that bumblebees can’t fly”, or alternatively “according to the laws of physics, it’s impossible for a bumblebee to fly”. You only have to look at a bumblebee flying (as in this video I filmed yesterday) to see the statement is patently false. Who says bumblebees can’t fly? Scientists say it! The laws of physics say it! If you want to prove that scientists and the laws of physics are dull-witted imbeciles, you only have to whip out the bumblebee quote.

Despite being such valuable ammunition for the technophobes and pseudoscientists of the world, there is actually no such thing as the non-flying bumblebee theorem. From a Google search, it’s clear that no-one really knows where the quote originated. My own theory is that it’s a mangled version of a subtly different statement: that “the equations of aerodynamics can’t be solved for the case of a flying bumblebee”. This latter statement is perfectly true – or at least it was when the myth of the non-flying bumblebee emerged in the 20th century.

The fundamental equations of aerodynamics are called the Navier-Stokes equations. These are non-linear partial differential equations, and they’re notoriously difficult to solve even with a modern computer. In fact they can’t be solved at all, in any general sense – they can only be approximated if you make additional simplifying assumptions relevant to the specific cases of interest. During the 20th century, the main “cases of interest” were manned aircraft. While still not easy, the Navier-Stokes equations could at least be made tractable with the aid of a number of simplifying assumptions – such as considering steady-state flow only, and restricting viscous effects to a thin boundary layer.

But these assumptions simply aren’t applicable to a bumblebee. The flow of air around such a tiny insect is highly viscous and anything but steady-state. If you tried to apply equations tailored for a 50-metre long, Mach 0.8 airliner to a bumblebee you might well calculate that the latter couldn’t fly – but the result would be meaningless, because the equations were applied way beyond their range of validity. 20th century aerodynamicists simply weren’t interested in developing the correct set of equations for bumblebees. The situation these days is different, with a lot of current research going into insect-sized “micro air vehicles”. Some of the devices emerging from science laboratories are described as bumblebee-sized – making it more ludicrous than ever to claim that scientists have "proved" that such things can’t fly!

An urban legend from 1940

One of the strangest types of urban legend is the friend-of-a-friend or “foaf-tale”, which appears to pop up spontaneously and propagate rapidly through society by word of mouth. Person A hears the tale from Person B, and gets the impression it happened to Person C – an acquaintance of Person B. But when Person B heard it from Person C, a few hours or days earlier, they had the impression it happened at one further remove, to Person D... and so on! The secret of a successful foaf-tale is that it should be shocking and rather far-fetched, but basically credible.

Generally the origins of a particular foaf-tale are lost in the mists of time. But I came across a subclass of foaf-tales the other day which must have originated in 1940, when Britain was collectively paranoid about the threat of a German invasion. Agatha Christie’s novel N or M? was published in 1941, and is set in the previous year. At one point, the following appears:

“The conversation during the meal turned on the absorbing subject of spies. Well-known hoary chestnuts were retold. The nun with the muscular arm, the clergyman descending from his parachute and using unclergymanlike language as he landed with a bump, the Austrian cook who secreted a wireless in her bedroom chimney, and all the things that had happened or nearly happened to aunts and second cousins of those present.”

The last phrase “things that had happened or nearly happened to aunts and second cousins” clearly indicates a foaf-tale situation. It’s also interesting that the stories are described as “well-known hoary chestnuts” – an odd way of putting it, when you realise the stories would only have been a month or so old. But people must have been tired of hearing them!

Later in the novel, the subject is touched on again when a character says “There have been so may good stories going around about nuns paying their fares in buses with hairy muscular arms”. This is archetypal foaf-tale material – bizarre, horrifying and yet compellingly believable!

I’m a big fan of Agatha Christie, and I’m slowly working my way through all her books. N or M? has been on the shelf waiting to be read for some time – I was finally prompted to read it by a recent item on the Daily Telegraph website: MI5 fears and an Agatha Christie mystery over Enigma leak! One of the characters in the story, Deborah Beresford, is working at a secret location in “the coding department”, while another character is a retired army officer named Major Bletchley (the Telegraph’s assertion that the Bletchley character has “inside knowledge of the progress of the war” is a journalistic exaggeration – actually he’s a typical old duffer living in the past). At the time the novel was written, the role of Bletchley Park as the UK’s cryptographic centre was Top Secret, so it’s no wonder that Military Intelligence were worried by the appearance of the name in a book about wartime espionage. It was, of course, pure coincidence!

N or M? is a sequel to Agatha Christie’s second novel, The Secret Adversary, written twenty years earlier. Unusually for popular fiction, the central characters are twenty years older in the sequel than they were in the first book. And the style of N or M? is more grown-up, too – more talk and less action! The Secret Adversary is one of the great adventure novels of the 20th century, which will have readers on the edge of their seats from beginning to end. N or M?, on the other hand, is for devotees only!

A "true" FOAF tale

Here is a cautionary tale about the hazards of driving a small car which is almost worthy of the Fortean Times "Strange Deaths" column. I heard it from a former colleague, who got it from his truck driver brother, who heard it from another truck driver who actually witnessed the incident. This may sound a bit like an urban legend or FOAF (friend of a friend) tale, but I couldn't find it listed on any of the urban legend sites so it must have really happened (In the interests of strict scientific accuracy, however, I should point out that the video clip at the end of this post is a computer-generated simulation, and not footage of the actual event).

The incident involved a Fiat 500, which is a notoriously small car and hence a potential death trap -- a fact borne out by the events that unfolded. The Fiat clipped the rear wheel of a large articulated lorry, causing the car to somersault. The driver, who wasn't wearing a seatbelt and had the sunroof open, fell out and landed on the roadway. A moment later (and only the most jaded cynic would claim this defies the laws of physics) his car fell on top of him and squashed him flat!

Dorset myth-conception

As readers of Fortean Times know, the world is full of "myth-conceptions" which sound so credible they get repeated ad nauseum, even though there is no truth to them. Here is one that has just been pointed out to me by Paul Jackson, concerning the Drax Estate's prominent "Stag Gate" on the A31 (the main route from Dorchester to the M27). The Stag is famous for having five legs -- and everyone in Dorset "knows" the reason for this. But they're wrong, as Paul explains:

"It seems that it has often been assumed (by me too) that the Stag was given a fifth leg to ensure that it looked like it had four legs when viewed from the road. Presumably when it only had four legs, it appeared to have three! However, when reading the Drax estate website I noticed that: Although the stag appears to have five legs, the 'fifth leg' is actually a 'tree stump' originally incorporated into the sculpture to add strength, as can be clearly seen in the photos [reproduced at left]. There are quite a few comments on-line and in publications that the stag has five legs so that it appears to have four when viewed from any angle, which is clearly imaginative but incorrect."