posted by Michael Thomas
In additional to the many sites who traditionally post distorted, untrue, or inexcusably slanted articles from the likes of Infowars and Before It’s News, there has been a rise of “truth” oriented websites that are actually profit-based machines with no regard for the truth or progress. I like to call them the “collective-evolution axis of disinformation”.
One thing many seem to share in common is that they share articles from collective-evolution. I first stumbled across them about a year ago when I read an article by the creator, Joe Martino, in which he claimed there was no environmental crisis, climate change was a big hoax, and that aliens are on their way to save us; suggesting there is no need to do anything. This is a conclusion which I oppose on scientific and logical grounds. I wrote to him to discuss what I saw as his hugely irresponsible position, only to get a truly insulting and condescending response ending with the suggestion that I should merely “do my research.” This phrase somehow appears to be a catch-phrase used by anyone making a pseudoscientific or unsupported argument.
The most prominent of these pages right now is probably The Mind Unleashed (with over 5 million likes), which first came to my attention when they were misinterpreting a study by one of my own professors, Dr.Olaf Kruse. His actual study found that unicellular algae (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii) can use exoenzymes to degrade the cellulose of other plant cells when photosynthetic energy is insufficient. After simply quoting the study’s abstract, the article suddenly jumps to citing an “Energy Healer” who proclaims “This is exactly why there are certain people who feel uncomfortable in specific group settings where there is a mix of energy and emotions,”.
This type of interpretation is wildly unconnected to the study. The study in no way supports the main premise of the article in any way, and in this context it is not even irrational to question the sanity of someone who makes such a comment when being confronted with the results of the study. This article, which rambles on with such meaningless pseudoscientific statements, got more than 900 initial shares when they posted it. Contrast this with about 300 shares on my “6 thing everyone should know about Ebola” text, which garnered dozens of dissonant comments from people that hadn’t even read the text, falsely interpreting a study that was discussed thoroughly within the text.
This type of pseudoscience is widespread, and in fact has led to us breaking existing share deals with other pages; most websites do not check the sources being cited in the articles they are referring to, and a chain of increasing misunderstanding ensues. This leads to outlandish and simply wrong statements being passed off as science to tens of thousands of people.
In even worse cases (like Before It’s News and WorldTruth.tv), they are publishing what they basically know to be outright lies. We have notified writers, such as Leah Lynz from Before It’s News and Eddie Levin from WorldTruth.tv, about certain information being incorrect or already disproven. Usually this productive criticism is outright ignored, or when accepted, they continue to spread the lies because they profit from traffic driven by the fearmongering sensationalism.
A past mistake of ours was working with “Natural Cures Not Medicine” creator “DCP”. During the period we worked with him, I had nightly arguments about the validity of the studies that “DCP” had obviously never read, but had written about, eventually leading us to fully discontinue any association with him and his websites.
As I outline in my “11 things I learned from working in social media,” people like the easy answer (without a lot of effort, in the form of thinking, involved) and are apt to choose it above a more honest, but less simple, answer. Pseudoscience offers both the chance for people to be “special” and “smart,” all without actually having to understand any science or look at any raw data.
Even many mainstream sources are often lazy in dealing with science, and routinely misinterpret the results of studies (or simply copy the discussion of the study without delving into the actual science at all). I find a good rule of thumb is reading at least the abstract of any study I see mentioned in an article, and if their description is vastly different then the website or the writer either ignorant, or wilfully spreading lies. This applies less to geo-political topics that are largely opinionated, but cases of blatantly false information can result in a source losing its credibility.
The internet offers us the chance of spread information faster than ever and gives us the possibility to change the understanding of the world. Unfortunately, it also makes the truth unclear in almost every category for the untrained reader. Simple pictures displaying witty truisms (which The Mind Unleashed excels at on Facebook), combined with polarized and pseudoscientific articles, appears to be the key to making tons of money on the internet.
Perhaps even worse than this, Sorcha Faal, a pseudonym of the person that runs websites EU Times and whatdoesitmean.com, intentionally makes up lies in every article, linking to other websites to backup some of the minor points of the article in an attempt to make the entire article appear well sourced. These websites are unfortunately very popular among those who don’t know this information.
While they go laughing to the bank, sources that actually do their fact-checking, and turn away pseudoscientific or factually skewed articles, are struggling to survive at all. We have done our best to maintain our integrity at every turn; correcting any mistakes, typos, or vagueness when informed by readers and ending deals with other people and websites when they were shown to be lazy with their fact-checking.
Aside from the content, they use pop-up ads, and largely (or entirely) copy content from other websites, not many websites write their own content.
The biggest problem is that most people do not look into what they read enough to be able to tell which websites fact-check well, and which are extremely bad sources.
Scientific journals (like Nature or Science) are frequently good sources; definitely superior to a link in someone’s blog, and if the study is not at least named (author, year at least) or linked in some way, there is no reason to believe what that website is telling you.
The slogan of Infowars is “There’s a war on for your mind!”, they may be right about this. There are those like WorldTruth.tv, Natural News and Before It’s News that spread sensationalist propaganda for money, and there are websites attempting to truly educate people that struggle to keep going. Even satire content is shared by millions of people.
If you are a fan of Before It’s News or WorldTruth.tv, perhaps a challenge could be to find an article on one of the websites that is entirely true, it may be possible, but it won’t be easy.
Below is a list we use at the The Worldwide Truth Movement and The Exposing The Truth Group discussions groups to mention some especially unreliable or highly biased sources:
- 21stcenturywire.com
- 4chan
- 4key.net
- A Sheep No More
- Alex Jones / Infowars /Prison Planet
- Alfred Webre & Leuren Moret
- althealthworks.com
- Anthony Gucciardi / storyleak.com / naturalsociety.com
- awdnews.com – AWDNews
- Before Its News
- Benjamin Fulford
- bibliotecapleyades.net
- Collective-Evolution
- consciouslifenews.com
- conspiracywatch.org
- conspiracyplanet.com
- cosmicconvergence.org
- countercurrentnews.com
- csglobe.com
- dailymail.co.uk
- dataasylum.com
- David Icke
- David Wilcock / divinecosmos.com
- DC Clothesline
- Dr Leonard Coldwell / drleonardcoldwell.com
- educate-yourself.org
- Erick von Daniken
- Food Babe
- fourwinds10.net
- Fox News
- globalresearch.ca
- godlikeproductions.com
- goldenageofgaia.com
- greatdreams.com
- illuminati-news.com
- infiniteunknown.ne
- tintellihub.com
- Jim Humble
- jimstonefreelance.com
- Knowledge of Today
- Liberty Beacon
- mailonsunday.co.uk
- Mark Dice / markdice.com
- Mercola
- misguidedchildren.com
- Natural News
- naturalcuresnotmedicine.com
- naturalhealth365.com
- naturalwikinuooz.com
- one-vibration.com
- pravda.ru
- presstv.com
- realfarmacy.com
- rense.com
- Rima Laibow (includingdrrima.net / drrimatruthreports.com / healthfreedomusa.org / healthfreedomportal.org / naturalsolutionsfoundation.org)
- sheepkillers.com
- Sorcha Faal / EUTimes / whatdoesitmean.com
- Stormfront
- TheDailySheeple
- theeconomiccollapseblog.com
- theforbiddenknowledge.com
- themindunleashed.org
- thrivemovement.com
- top10homeremedies.com
- truthcdm.com
- truthchaser.com
- truthstreammedia.com
- truththeory.com / truththeory.org
- truthwikiufos-aliens.co.uk
- vaccineliberationarmy.com
- veteranstoday.com
- whale.to
- WorldTruth.tv
- Zecharia Sitchin
- zengardner.com
- Any neo Nazi site Such as Stormfront
Do not use as sources: Satire and parody sites
- capnews.com
- chronicle.su
- dailycurrant.com
- dailysquib.co.uk
- derfmagazine.com
- enduringvision.com
- fakingnews.firstpost.com
- nationalreport.net
- newsbiscuit.com
- newsmutiny.com
- newsswallow.com
- newsthump.com
- parodyreport.com
- private-eye.co.uk
- sportspickle.com
- tawdrysoup.com
- The Onion
- thedailymash.co.uk
- thedailyrash.com
- thedailysatire.com
- thedailywtf.com
- thepoke.co.uk
- theunrealtimes.com
- unconfirmedsources.com
- WakeupWorld.com
- weeklyworldnews.com
- Wyoming Institute of Technology
Fear mongering propoganda websites about chemtrails
- aboutthesky.com
- aircrap.org
- bariumblues.com
- carnicominstitute.org
- chemicalskyfall.com
- chemtrailcentral.com
- chemtrailer.com
- chemtrails.cc
- chemtrails911.com
- chemtrailsnorthnz.wordpress.com
- chemtrailsplanet.net
- chemtrailsproject.com
- chemtrailsprojectuk.com
- climateviewer.com
- consciousnessbeyondchemtrails.com
- geoengineeringwatch.org
- globalmarchagainstchemtrailsandgeoengineering.com
- globalskywatch.com
- morgellonsexposed.com
- skyderalert.com
- thetruthdenied.com
- uk-skywatch.co.uk
- weatherwars.info
Read more: http://www.exposingtruth.com/bad-sources-spread-pseudscience/#ixzz3vQ75Zpf2
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