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Comment by dTal | Hacker News Reader

I'm not even sure Google's behaviour is wrong in this instance. The kind of person who would google something as obvious as that is probably actually more interested in the woo-answer, and I don't neccesarily think it's Google's job to be the woo-police (as appealing as that sounds, it's risky unless they can do a 100% accurate job).

To illustrate with another example, if I ask Google where the government is hiding the aliens, I'm probably more interested in the answer "Area 51" than "the government isn't hiding any aliens".

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"2 Balances pH: Lemons are an incredibly alkaline food, believe it or not. Yes, they are acidic on their own, but inside our bodies they're alkaline (the citric acid does not create acidity in the body once metabolized"

That's what I get in the answer box. Wow.

I think it absolutely is Google's job to be the woo police in the privileged answer box. They can just choose not to display it for answers they're not confident in owning and leave you with the general search results.

It probably needs to be a whitelist. Most of the time it's wikipedia anyway (a whole other can of worms, but at least it won't tell you that lemons are alkaline or feed your conspiracy theories)

It looks like that's correct though, as supported by the first google hit [1] for that subject, which in fact is arguing the stupidity of the alkaline diet. It's also supported by the table in this paper [2]. The only catch being that your kidneys eliminate the extra alkaline products in your urine so it has no effect on most of your body.

[1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/lemon-juice-acidic-or-a... [2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002822395...

> I don't neccesarily think it's Google's job to be the woo-police (as appealing as that sounds, it's risky unless they can do a 100% accurate job).

Aside from my general disagreement with your statement, wouldn't that actually be pretty bad for business? If I'm looking for a factual answer about something, and Google continually gives me garbage, I'll just stop using Google.

Google isn't limited to factual information, in fact most content on the internet is not 'factual'

If they're presenting it as a factual answer, then it should be a factual answer.

> The kind of person who would google something as obvious as that

Yes, no kid is ever gonna google that. While we are at it, let's show that earth is flat when someone google for image of earth's curvature because why would you search that. You obviously are a flat-earther.

A correct answer is better than an answer someone is interested in. For example "Is Obama a Muslim?". Someone googling that might be interested in hearing something that reaffirms their preconceived notions, but we as a society would be better off if they were provided with correct information.

> A correct answer is better than an answer someone is interested in. For example "Is Obama a Muslim?". Someone googling that might be interested in hearing something that reaffirms their preconceived notions, but we as a society would be better off if they were provided with correct information.

While I totally agree with the statement that it is better for society that people receive correct than reassuring information, I think the relevant question—not in terms of ethics, but in terms of what will happen—is whether Google feels it is better for them.

(It may also be fair to note that some questions don't have a correct answer, or that the answer isn't known, or that there is controversy, in which case I hope very much that Google doesn't get in the business of deciding what is the best answer, but simply neutrally points me to what is out there.)

Unfortunately, people have extremely high trust of Google. People use Google to win arguments. People use Google as a replacement for text books. For cases like this, there shouldn't be a factual answer box. It would be really bad if people could just SEO Google into saying whatever 'truth' that's profitable.

> I don't neccesarily think it's Google's job to be the woo-police (as appealing as that sounds, it's risky unless they can do a 100% accurate job).

Eek, does it really sound appealing to you to have Google aspiring to do a 100% accurate job of deciding what information it's right for me to see?

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