I'm curious to see

How many people see something on FB, here or elsewhere and look it up for themselves to see if it is accurate or just take what they have seen at face value.

I see a lot of people say they "saw something", but then provide no actual information. Then i go an look things up and find the information they "saw" was wrong, skewed or misaligned.

I am guilty of not looking things up from time to time, but when questioned on them, I will and correct things. I make mistakes. But I do try to look things up to make sure things are correct.

It just seems so many do not and I have to say, this is part of the problem with people today.

We literally can't take anything at face value anymore. There is sooooo much misinformation and propaganda out there now. We are truly in a troubling time when it comes to information, but so many people are still wanting to take things as truth at face value which only hurts us.

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

OldBrit · 61-69, M

By instinct I'm a researcher. I'll go look stuff up, try to find the the original source etc.

By way of example on here only a few days ago someone stated something instinctively I thought "That's nonsense". So I search specifically where the facts might be. They claimed something was English law. So I headed to Legislation.co.uk the definitive place. Couldn't find anything in my search.

So I asked them for a link to the actual legislation. Apparently they then spoke to a policeman who said they weren't going to enforce it.

Hmmmm - police can't pick and choose what law they enforce it's either law or not basically. It's why in the decision to prosecute is never the police's to make it's the CPS.

Just one example. Repeatedly over the years I have read "Research says...." "Researchers have found....". I use Google scholar, arXiv, research gate, pubmed etc again looking for an actual peer reviewed research paper. Countless times I fail to find it. And countless times those stating these "facts" can't provide me with one either when I ask them.

Learn to research. I think it should be mandatory schooling as part of critical thinking skills.