Scientists shouldn’t miss a chance to expose fake news

假新闻— including fake science news — is taking the world by storm. So much so that governments all over the world are now threatening action, in some cases along the lines of what they did earlier to traditional媒体。

Sample these headlines:

前两个在2016年美国大选之前在Facebook上流行了，并引起了很多关注，以至于新闻媒体Buzzfeed发表了分析on how they had outperformed real news on Facebook. Fake news items such as these appeared on regular and social media channels and were swallowed up by millions of people in recent months.

在科学方面，假新闻的一个例子包括淡化了吸烟和二手烟对人类健康不利的事实。网站撤回手表的联合创始人伊万·奥兰斯基（Ivan Oransky）和亚当·马库斯（Adam Marcus）检测到由于可疑发现而撤回的学术报纸，还报告说，喷气式飞机蒸气径含有有毒材料，而不仅仅是冰晶晶体。

其他可疑研究包括那些将疫苗与自闭症联系起来的，这种联系长期以来一直被揭穿，并声称艾滋病病毒doesn’t cause AIDS.

Modern-day propaganda

假新闻是为了误导读者而制作的，通常是为了政治利益或经济利润。它被定义为“a catch-all term encompassing propaganda, misinformation, disinformation and hoaxing — including the spheres of science and medicine”。

在《假新闻》一词流行之前，人们经常会使用宣传一词，自古代以来使用为了政治利益。据说罗马领事奥克塔维安（Octavian）诉诸虚假信息，以赢得对马克·安东尼（Marc Anthony）的战争。在第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战期间，美国和英国政府在与德国的斗争中有效地利用了宣传。

“很大程度上不了解的人群可以轻松欺骗。在亚洲和非洲发展中国家尤其如此。”

克里斯平·马斯拉格（Crispin Maslog）

Enter the Internet and the fake news economy. Here we see small groups of people taking advantage of sensational news items to build up readership for advertising and to influence people. Internet fake news is similar to propaganda in that both“distort the truth for emotional persuasion, seeking to drive action”。

US President Donald Trump can be credited with popularising the term fake news. At his first press conference as President-elect in 2016, he railed at journalists interviewing him: “You are fake news!” Since then, Trump has regularly made similar accusations against major media outlets on his Twitter feed.

In Asia, fake news is spread mainly出于政治而不是经济或科学原因。

In the 2015 Indonesian elections, it was used to portray current president Joko Widodo as having an ethnic Chinese and a Catholic background in a Muslim state. But it did not affect his popularity. In the 2016 Philippine election, President-elect Rodrigo Duterte reportedly had an army of ‘trolls’ to regularly post propaganda on social media. His trolls even received partial credit for his victory. [1]

在印度，总理纳伦德拉·莫迪（Narendra Modi）曾经是他的巴拉蒂亚·贾纳塔（Bharatiya Janata）党的发言人，据说这是通过代表他的良好油腻的巨魔机械的支持，于2014年通过了2014年上台。

"This makes it imperative for scientists to take every opportunity to expose fake news for what it is."

克里斯平·马斯拉格（Crispin Maslog）

科学文盲的一步

分析师认为，假新闻的扩散部分是由于教育标准滞后的。在很大程度上没有受过教育的人群很容易被欺骗。尽管在亚洲和非洲发展中国家尤其如此，但假新闻在欧洲和美国受过较低教育的社会部分中更容易传播。

It takes just one small step to get from superstition to belief in fake news. Science illiteracy easily leads to false beliefs. Ignorance breeds gullibility.

假新闻又破坏了科学信誉和侵蚀公众对科学的信任, especially in underdeveloped countries with an unschooled public where public trust is low to begin with.

这使科学家必须抓住一切机会以揭露假新闻的本质。在美国，已经采取了一些举措来教学生如何发现虚假报告。但是可以做更多的事情 - 例如，美国国家科学院应成为其授权的一部分，以反对这种错误信息。

The case for media literacy and science education becomes urgent in the digital era, where 60 per cent of the population gets its information from social media.

这是一个挑战，还要求提供社交媒体平台的提供商，例如Facebook，Instagram和Twitter，以加强他们为监管平台的努力- 比政府对自我政策更好。

如果自我审查未能阻止假新闻的潮流，那么政府在发展社会中接受社交媒体法规存在真正的危险。作为印度尼西亚的人权观察研究员，这些标志已经在东南亚已经存在Andreas Harsono has warned。

Many governments in the region are already using the fake news phenomenon to label most media criticism as false, opening the way for state regulation of social media.

新加坡现在正在研究引入法律的可能性新加坡法律和内政部长Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam说：“迫使社交媒体公司消除误导性的报告。”Shanmugam说，他受到德国总理安吉拉·默克尔（Angela Merkel）的启发，以引入立法，以“迫使社交媒体公司迅速从互联网上撤回假新闻故事，或者面临处罚。”

那是墙上的写作。

这件作品由Scidev.net的亚太桌子制作。