Far-right populists much more likely than the left to spread fake news – study

Let's take a look then. Firstly, is it replicable? Many academic papers aren't because their methodology either isn't specified, or the methodology isn't derived logically from the hypothesis.

Here they are relying on Wikipedia and "Media Bias/Fact Check" to decide if a source is factual, and then decide anything published by any such source is wrong, and then that anyone who refers to any such article is also wrong. This is replicable at some surface level - you could use the same sources and same tweets to compute the same numbers, but lacks any form of deeper replicability because the choice of these two meta-sources doesn't follow obviously from the hypothesis and they don't specify how they chose them (beyond citing other papers that made the same choice).

So an obvious criticism is how do you know these meta-sources aren't junk? They thought of this, and say:

> To ensure the robustness of our methods, the factuality measure was manually validated to ensure that the articles shared in fact contain misinformation (see Supplemental Information File). We selected a stratified random sample of 50 articles from each of the five predefined factuality levels, totaling 250 articles. These were manually analyzed ... The results are reported in Supplemental Tables S6 and S7,

But if we check the Supplementary Tables then we find no such validation. Ironically, this study itself contains misinformation. The articles they checked aren't listed, nor is how they decided what was or was not true. The tables are a masterclass in circular logic, comparing how accurate articles are against their "factuality group" and discovering that, shock, the academics who chose the sources agree that they are good sources. Nothing is presented that can actually be refined or refuted, because this entire "manual validation" boils down to circular reasoning of the form "the sources we chose are accurate because we checked and say they are accurate". It's just a restatement of the rest of the paper, dressed up with some tables to look sciencey.

In the penultimate paragraph they do inch towards an actual evaluation, but it just shows how pseudo-scientific this paper is. They admit that in many cases sources they put in a low factuality group do report accurate news, but justify the decision by saying (about RT):

> Although each individual article may be factually correct in its reporting on individual battles, the overall story is thus a false narrative of a highly successful ‘special military operation.’ This underscores the limitations of assessing factuality solely based on the accuracy of individual articles, offering further support for the validity of relying on media outlet-level analyses.

This is a Kafka trap. If you report accurate stories you are nonetheless inaccurate because you don't report the things we think you should, and therefore anyone who cites you for anything at all, ever, is "spreading misinformation" regardless of topic or correctness of the statement made. The only type of source anyone is allowed to use is one that promotes the academics preferred slants, regardless of the accuracy of the information published.

There are tens of thousands of studies like this coming out of academia every year that are little more than Guardian-bait. Zero of them are scientific, yet all are presented as if they are. When people call them out on this behavior, they're accused by the left of being "anti science". Where are the intellectual standards?

It is not just 'interesting' it is in fact essential to prevent disaster on the scale of the Second World War or worse. It seems there are people who are intrinsically motivated to hate. These are the ones who are on the far right even in peaceful times. I think they are pretty much the high school bully who never grew up. Then there are those who are uncertain about the future and therefore inciteable to mistrust/hate. Then there are political leaders who estimate the size of both groups and notice that if they add them up and maybe add some violence around the elections in the mix, they might just reach a majority. Actually being interested in how things work is the business of none of the people described here.

You and I may prefer not to operate from a place of ignorance or naiveté but there genuinely are people who do not give a shit about knowledge, learning, logic, reality, or sanity.

They couldn’t give a shit about anything that doesn’t impact them negatively.

I used to know several of these people and they were utterly exhausting. If ever I tried to answer a question, the question was suddenly rhetorical and I was somehow a weirdo for being able to answer it. They would say things like “I don’t actually care” in response to attempting to answer a question or engage in honest dialogue. About anything.

Totally cynical, off-the-cuff, knee-jerk response: we're social monkeys, and group membership is more important than abstract concepts.

I received a hard lesson in this topic during Covid, when I didn't start wearing a mask until everyone else did. I knew I should, but I didn't want to stand out from the crowd.

The left also has its shibboleths. As I'm sure do stamp collectors, submariners, cryptozoologists, forensic accountants, etc etc etc. Human nature.

(Did you see how the conversation got poisoned, then flagged? Call me paranoid, but...)

I mean, the narrative pushed by right wing politicians is often more vibes based than the one by the left. Look right now: "the immigrants are ruining America/Europe" Vs "the ultra wealthy are hoarding capital which is ruining the economy and breeds economic injustice".

The far right Swedish party says (more or less) "all the problems are the immigrants' fault". The left says "can we expect the government to do as much as it did 30 years ago when we cut taxes by 500 billion sek (adjusted for inflation and population size)".

The can be some points to both, but I do think the second one has more merits with regards to explaining the health care problems.

I am sad to hear that. I, on the other hand, am capable of distinguishing between people I have disagreements with and people who are far-left or far-right populists.

That sentence is very often seen online as a dismissal of someone calling out far-right opinions. Either the poster is just parroting others, or they are a part of a concerted effort to minimize being perceived as far-right activity and maximize the end effect of said activity.

Sure. But what do you think of the findings of the study?

Everyone I disagree with are doing obvious, unapologetic nazi salutes in public political events.

Probably because other side doesn't like fact checking.