Berk Özler over at DI has a fascinating post discussing the implications of a recent paper on how people absorb misinformation and how capable we are at discarding it. The basic conclusion?
So, what are the implications? The authors suggest that repetitions of misinformation are likely to be stronger if they come from multiple (and somewhat independent sources). So, if one person is repeatedly providing misinformation, this will likely be less effective than multiple sources repeating the same misinformation with the same frequency. Combining this with the fact that retractions have to be equally vigorous to be at least somewhat effective in changing opinions, the picture is not pretty.This is not good news from Dominic Strauss-Kahn's accuser, who might not have made some of the damning comments she was recently cited as having made.
Also, as Berk points out, I'm doing everyone a slight disservice by linking to his discussion of the study (which, I should point out, contains no criticisms of the work) without adding my own insights:
This gives all of us more responsibility as authors and as disseminators of research. Suppose that Tyler Cowen posts a blog about a paper, which is linked to by Chris Blattman with no addition comment other than a tip of the hat, then retweeted by Poverty Action, finally reported perhaps in a newspaper blog. If all the links subsequent to the first post relied on the first one without examining the paper or the evidence for themselves (I am not saying that they do, the names here are popular bloggers with large followings), then this gives the impression of independent sources confirming (or at least repeating) the same piece of information while being completely dependent on the first report. If someone then subsequently finds a flaw with the paper, they can also write about it, but unless the first set of bloggers (or an equal number with equal credibility) also reports the correction with equal vigor, high levels of misinformation will continue. Even if they do, the misinformation will still not disappear.This is incredibly important. While peer review acts as a (flawed) quality control mechanism for published research, there is little in the way of quality control in the ethereal realm of public knowledge. Bloggers have as much a responsibility to knock bad research out of the sky as they do to disseminate it - and yes, I'm looking at you, twitter-linking addicts.