Fake news and post-truth pronouncements in general and in early human development

Highlights

• Fake news and post-truth pronouncements are increasingly common.

• They are also being to science and to medicine.

• This editorial reviews this unsavoury trend.

• It also highlights recent debunking of fake truths in early human development.

• We, as scientists, must continue to uphold science's integrity and probity.

Abstract

Fake news and post-truth pronouncements are increasingly common, and are unfortunately also progressively being applied to the sciences, including the medical sciences. This editorial briefly reviews this unsavoury trend and highlights recent debunking of fake truths in early human development. Science is arguably the last metanarrative with any significant cachet in the postmodern period. We, as scientists, must strive to ensure that our work is transparent and of the highest possible standard so as to continue to uphold science's integrity and probity.

Introduction

A metanarrative is an overarching concept that purports to give context, meaning, and purpose to life. Examples include religions, Freudianism, Marxism, and Capitalism. The Postmodern era was defined by the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) as “as incredulity toward metanarratives” [2], with science constituting “arguably the last metanarrative with any significant cachet in the post-postmodern condition” [3], thus potentially offering a haven of truth, an outright refuge for the general public. However, the perceived rectitude of this pillar is being undermined by fake news and post-truth utterances.

The term “Post-truth” was coined in 1992 [4] and describes a mostly political setting whereby debate is framed by appeals to emotion, with repeated assertion of half-truths and outright lies whose factual rebuttals are ignored. Actual truth as relegated as being of secondary importance, a totally alien and inconceivable concept in the sciences. This is arguably best depicted in George Orwell's 1984 wherein the State deliberately – and if necessary, even daily – tailors and alters historic and archival records in order to fit the propaganda goals of the day [5]. Post-truth in 1984 necessitated the ability to perform “doublethink”, simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, and “doublespeak”, language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. The modern version of the actual application of this false discourse is known as peddling “alternative facts” [6], an inherently oxymoronic term that has come to be part of the contemporary zeitgeist.

Post-truth is aided and abetted by the peddling of fake news, journalism (or outright propaganda) that is comprised of deliberate misinformation or hoaxes. Fake news is not new, and may be very effective, even if this is not a deliberate intention. The classic example remains the “The War of the Worlds” episode of American radio drama by Orson Welles, an adaptation of H. G. Wells's 1898 novel The War of the Worlds [7], which was read as a series of simulated news bulletins. Although preceded by an unambiguous introduction which explicitly stated that the radio program was fictional, the radio program engendered mass hysteria in audiences who believed that Martians were actually invading [8]. The old adage is clearly accurate: “One can fool some men, or fool all men in some places and times, but one cannot fool all men in all places and ages” [9]. Truly “there's a sucker born every minute” [10].

The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) identified four incremental stages in the philosophy of simulation and fakery [11]:

• A faithful image/copy.

• Perversion of reality.

• A copy with no original.

• Pure simulacrum, with no relationship to any reality whatsoever, the “hyperreal”

More recently, fake news has been categorised as [12]:

• Satire or parody: no actual intention to harm but has potential to deceive.

• False connection: when headlines or visuals of captions fail to support the content.

• Misleading content: with disingenuous use of information to frame an issue or an individual.

• False content: when genuine content is shared with false contextual information.

• Imposter content: when genuine sources are impersonated with false, made-up sources.

• Manipulated content.

• Fabricated content: outright false information.

Faith in the sciences is derived from its striving for transparent workings and its inbuilt system of checks and balances. The Austrian philosopher Karl Popper (1902–1994) defined science as that which can be proven wrong, i.e. statements, hypotheses, or theories that are falsifiable [13], and this remains the currently accepted demarcation criterion between science and pseudoscience. Scientific theories are elevated to this status from hypotheses when shown to be correct beyond reasonable doubt. However, they may still, in the fullness of time, be disproven, and become overturned and replaced by a new paradigm, since the entire science camp is totally rooted in the scientific method. This comprises a system of inductive reasoning based on systematic observations, such that a single contrary observation can disprove a theory. Indeed, the inherent limitations of the scientific method are highly internalised in scientists and almost forces them to add qualifiers – words or phrases that precede an adjective or adverb and increase or decrease the quality signified by the word it modifies – at the conclusion of scientific papers and similar sober statements.

Furthermore, science is disseminated by the peer-review method in that manuscripts submitted to journals are first reviewed by editors, and then by peers in typically blinded fashion. Based on their counsel, editors then decide whether to reject or accept the submitted work, with changes as requested by reviewers. This form of scrutiny, in the main, constitutes an effective (and still the only widely accepted) method for research validation.

Fake science may arise from one of two causes, scientific fraud or the politicization of science. Since scientists are not saints, the former occurs, albeit uncommonly, and only two notorious recent examples will be given. A South Korean scientist claimed that his research group had succeeded in creating human embryonic stem cells by cloning somatic cells. Investigators blamed several facets in this flawed research including aspiring but sycophantic junior scientists who fabricated results and a leader who, while possibly blind to these failures, actually requested more fabrications in order to hasten publication rates [14].

The second example remains a cause célèbre to this day: the MMR-autism scandal, a link that was shown to be not only inaccurate but actually fraudulent, arousing widespread controversy in and outside academia, and heated public debate [15]. While settled in the eyes of the medical profession, the original fake claim has attained a form of immortality and continues to resurface endlessly in the social media in the form of a conspiracy theory [16]. The damage inflicted by such incidents was aptly summarised: “Truth is central to the core mission of the medical and scientific literature. What is the worst sin, work-related, a scientist can commit? Lying … falsifying evidence, means that we have no basis for communication. The whole enterprise crumbles.” [17].

A relatively recent and novel take on the matter is the multiplication of “open access” predatory journals with poor or non-existent review processes that facilitate publication against a fee. In effect, a publication is purchased by author/s, circumventing the peer-review quality control process [18]. This cannot but further reduce science's claim to probity.

The second source of fake science is the politicization of science for personal purposes, with the peddling of fake news composed of the deliberate selection of facts that politicians wish to pursue and the data they are willing to promote or denigrate. This constitutes inaccurate or outright incorrect information that is disseminated and thereby inflated and multiplied by social media and the web. Both scientific fraud and political fake news undermine science and its perceived integrity [12], and medical science is arguably particularly vulnerable as it affects health, a sensitive and personal issue.

Fake claims and fake science have also been debunked in early human development. For example, the Icelandic men's national football team won 2–1 in June 2016, knocking England out of the UEFA European Championship. Nine months later, a local doctor tweeted in jest suggesting that a baby boom had occurred as a result of increased celebratory coital activity following the win. The media covered this widely but statistical birth analysis showed the claim to be false [19].

Even more lewdly, the Fifty Shades of Grey (FSOG) trilogy were characterised by soft porn elements that include risqué themes such as bondage, dominance and submission, and sadio-masochism. These narratives were publicised by the media as inflammatory, with increased coital activity, and that this would result a baby boom. “It's one of the hottest and best-selling book series of all time. It has made millions of readers swoon” [20]. Authorities were cited as confirming this effect and for example, Robin Milhausen, an Associate Professor of Family Relations and Human Sexuality at the University of Guelph, was quoted as saying that “the material is arousing…Many women respond to the book and don't even know it. It's leading to more sex” [21]. However, there were no discernible spikes in births at annual level, or circa nine months after the book releases, in both the United States [22] and in England and Wales [23]. These studies highlight the importance of measurement of cause and effect since anticipated results may not always ensue from events.