The Gold Fish Myth

he CBC interview on human attention span yesterday identified the 12 seconds and 8 seconds (and then the goldfish at 9 seconds)  attention span statistics as unfounded, unprovable, and as a result, unlikely and probably false.  The neuroscientist being interviewed says that there is research available that shows human attention span is unlimited when the person is focused and enjoying the activity they are involved in.  The 'flow' state and the 'zone' are the terms for this.  There are countless articles on attention span quoting the 12-8-9 numbers.  This means that journalists are unconsciously spreading fake news by not properly checking facts and scientific references. And not just a few journalists: Time magazine, the Telegraph, the Guardian, USA Today, the New York Times and the National Post. And then there are the repetitions in numerous blogs and websites.  Poor TIME Magazine - it comes up right at the topi of the list. There are articles addressing the attention span statistic fallacy/myth.  The PolicyViz article is HERE.  It was written in 2016.  The author says: "I’ve written about other bad statistics in the past (here and here), and this one is no exception. It’s not correct! Look, it’s not that I don’t believe we have shorter attention spans in the past because I’m sure we do, it’s just that I don’t have a reliable number to put on it. And, by the way, I like John Medina’s (from Brain Rules fame) advice to break up instruction/presentation into 10-minute chunks, which is based on actual research on instruction." And to compare attention span to goldfish is a second false idea. Scientists have debunked the short attention span of goldfish myth.  The BBC.com  writer spoke to a professor who studies fish and she says there are many studies on fish memory (as early as 1908), and fish perform the same kinds of learning as mammals and birds.   And we're only looking at the quality of journalism reporting.  The Grievance Studies affair was a project to highlight poor scholarship in several academic fields.  The team submitted bogus academic papers to academic journals to determine if they would pass through peer review, and several were accepted and published.  You can read about it in Wikipedia which says:  "These published articles included an argument that dogs engage in rape culture, that men could reduce their transphobia by anally penetrating themselves with sex toys, and a rewrite of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf in feminist language." I compare these two for poor methods, although there is a distinction between "active" hoaxes and poor fact checking. Two more images of the Sago Palm today.  A little more green as our landscape quickly goes gold, orange, red and brown.

Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

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Is Fake News a Dumpster Fire?

How did 2017 end and how will 2018 start?  In word terms, I mean.  We can easily find out about 2017 - there's a word of the year.  Wikipedia defines the word of the year:  "The word(s) of the year, sometimes capitalized as "Word(s) of the Year" and abbreviated "WOTY" (or "WotY"), refers to any of various assessments as to the most important word(s) or expression(s) in the public sphere during a specific year." The official dictionary sites report on the most searched word of the year and seems to be based on quantity - statistics rather than quality - assessments. The English Oxford Living Dictionaries says that the word of the Year for 2017 is... youthquake, defined as ‘a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people’. Dictionary.com has this word: Complicit.   Merriam-Webster's 2017 Words of the Year is Feminism, followed by dotard, gaffe, syzygy, and others. The Collins Dictionary word of the year is... Fake News. Wikipedia looks to the American Dialect Society for the definitive word.  Members in the 129-year-old organization include linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, grammarians, historians, researchers, writers, editors, students, and independent scholars, according to the ADS release. Their word of the year is "Fake News." The society chose the phrase on Jan. 5th. They defined it as “disinformation or falsehoods presented as real news” and “actual news that is claimed to be untrue.” It was selected for “best representing the public discourse and preoccupations of the past year.”  What did they have to say about it? “When President Trump latched on to fake news early in 2017, he often used it as a rhetorical bludgeon to disparage any news report that he happened to disagree with,” said Ben Zimmer, chair of the American Dialect Society’s New Words Committee. “That obscured the earlier use of fake news for misinformation or disinformation spread online, as was seen on social media during the 2016 presidential campaign.” Here is the ADS' full list of words over the years.  And how does fake news relate to dumpster fire?  ADS' word last year was dumpster fire - (US, slang) A chaotic,unpleasant, unmanageable thing, situation or person:  a disaster. To find out about the origins of this expression, look at the Huffington Post article.  In the personal realm, there is a movement that seeks out a word to define one's year ahead. This kind of choosing relates to New Year's Resolutions.  Take a look at connect.org for more on this. Here are two of my favourite locations - the underground walkway at rush hour in Toronto's Scotia Plaza and the Charles Daley Park willow tree.

Getting the Fake News

The ads that appear all over our internet displays often contain news of some celebrity's death.  This week I saw a news article that Trump's wife was filing for divorce and didn't have plans to be the first lady.  This was a fake news story - with a "fake news notice" on the story.   A site has indicated that Facebook is testing fake news flags.  The warning is  "this website is not a reliable news source.  Reason:  Classification Pending". According to BBC Trending, the problem of fake news has become significant in the U.S. The current circulating fake news story is Pizzagate.   This is a false news story that claims there is a paedophilia ring involving people at the highest levels of the Democratic Party operating out of a Washington pizza restaurant named Comet Ping Pong. Fake news is being covered broadly by the press right now.  The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Onion, BBC, and RollingStone have articles within the last few days. The RollingStone article - How a Fake Newsman Accidentally Helped Trump Win the White House- is compelling.  This is about a Pheonix fake newsman.  He is  the perpetrator of the story on gang-rape parties in India - an internationally famous fake news story. He makes his living from the ad revenue. A site to check out is Fake News Watch with their listing of fake websites, satire websites, and clickbait websites.  The names of clickbait sites are themselves a revelation. Here are a few: HangTheBankers.com GovtSlaves.info CountdownToZeroTime.com Infowars.com HumansAreFree.com TheDailySheeple.com PrisonPlanet.com