Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 417 posts

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#391

Post by brightball »

emodendroket wrote: post #371
brightball wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t mean you have to accept it, it just means that there’s very little you can assert as false. Snopes does that every day with very little to prove it other than the desires of its readers to agree with them.

"False" is clearly shorthand for "there is no evidence that this is true." If I wrote "brightball beats his wife" and then said you couldn't really say it was false because you couldn't prove it had never happened definitively it would be outrageous, right? Nobody would accept that as a reasonable argument.

Exactly. And it would be the same if you included the word “doesn’t” in that statement. It just means that it’s all hearsay and only the people involved know the real truth.

This is why gossip and rumors are such a powerful thing. We all want to think that what we know or what we heard is true, but very few people are willing to accept that what they heard might not be accurate. Especially once they have repeated it to someone else.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#392

Post by emodendroket »

brightball wrote: post #391
emodendroket wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"False" is clearly shorthand for "there is no evidence that this is true." If I wrote "brightball beats his wife" and then said you couldn't really say it was false because you couldn't prove it had never happened definitively it would be outrageous, right? Nobody would accept that as a reasonable argument.

Exactly. And it would be the same if you included the word “doesn’t” in that statement. It just means that it’s all hearsay and only the people involved know the real truth. This is why gossip and rumors are such a powerful thing. We all want to think that what we know or what we heard is true, but very few people are willing to accept that what they heard might not be accurate. Especially once they have repeated it…

No. It’s not even hearsay. That’s the point.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#393

Post by vfclists »

latexr wrote: post #129
vfclists wrote: post #100

HN is becoming less and less a place where issues are rarely discussed. The most irrelevant comments always rise to the top and more and more people join in and waffle about nothing. The interesting point in the article is this one: "Snopes VP of Editorial and Managing Editor Doreen Marchionni suspended Mikkelson from editorial duties pending “a comprehensive internal investigation.” He remains an officer and a 50% s…

> How can the whatever whatever suspend her boss from editorial duties pending a comprehensive internal investigation? Did she clear that with her boss first? From David Mikkelson’s statement (scroll to the bottom): > I have given full authority to our managing editor, Doreen Marchionni, to take any measures needed to address these issues.

Did she ask the boss for the boss to give her the authority, or did the boss approach her voluntarily and give the authority.

So why didn't the boss apply his own authority to himself and announce it to the press? The whole thing is face.

Why didn't the boss simply resign himself from the role?

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#394

Post by vfclists »

tablespoon wrote: post #303
j_m_b wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one time, Snopes was part of the fact-checking team at Facebook. This comment goes to show that having an arbiter of truth is a bad idea considering it's hard to accurately know everything. Imagine Doctors trying to debunk the official fact-checker statements and being labeled as misinformation simply due to the fact that they disagree with the fact-checker!

> Imagine Doctors trying to debunk the official fact-checker statements and being labeled as misinformation simply due to the fact that they disagree with the fact-checker! Though it's worth noting that MDs (and all other kinds of doctors) can be incompetent and/or batshit insane. For instance, I had the pleasure of viewing a video where a psychiatrist leaned on his MD credential to "debunk" COVID and the efficacy an…

I don't know about psychiatry in America, but psychiatry is a specialty within general medicine, so he is qualified to speak on the efficacy and safety of the vaccine.

The authority based medicine surrounding Covid is completely out of hand

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#395

Post by brightball »

emodendroket wrote: post #371
brightball wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t mean you have to accept it, it just means that there’s very little you can assert as false. Snopes does that every day with very little to prove it other than the desires of its readers to agree with them.

"False" is clearly shorthand for "there is no evidence that this is true." If I wrote "brightball beats his wife" and then said you couldn't really say it was false because you couldn't prove it had never happened definitively it would be outrageous, right? Nobody would accept that as a reasonable argument.

And come on, “Unconfirmed” clearly means there is no evidence to confirm this.

“False” means not true.

I don’t expect anyone reading to interpret that differently.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#396

Post by emodendroket »

brightball wrote: post #395
emodendroket wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"False" is clearly shorthand for "there is no evidence that this is true." If I wrote "brightball beats his wife" and then said you couldn't really say it was false because you couldn't prove it had never happened definitively it would be outrageous, right? Nobody would accept that as a reasonable argument.

And come on, “Unconfirmed” clearly means there is no evidence to confirm this. “False” means not true. I don’t expect anyone reading to interpret that differently.

So the existence of fairies and unicorns is merely "unconfirmed"? I would consider that term to mean that there is one reasonably credible report that has not been corroborated.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#397

Post by zamadatix »

ALittleLight wrote: post #374
zamadatix wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty cut and dry, the question is pertaining to actual events not the rate of report for each event. Think of it this way: if Sweden counted population differently than other countries and came up with a population of 2 billion it'd still false that Sweden is the most populous country in the world, they would simply be the country which _reports_ the highest population in the world. While interesting i…

You assume Sweden's high rape rate is based on their counting and reporting practices. Have you looked through the counting and reporting methods for all other countries in Europe and standardized them to reach this conclusion? To me, as someone who hasn't looked at the crime reporting and counting methods of all the countries of Europe, this sounds like a possible explanation, maybe even a likely one, but possible e…

It's not my idea, it's the central conclusion of the study you were replying about which sought to investigate this exact line of questions https://www.bra.se/bra-in-english/home/news-from-bra/archive...

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#398

Post by antifa »

smnrchrds wrote: post #86
dfee wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not a better established position? I see Snopes as pure, unadulterated bias. Honestly, I see all those fact checking websites the same way. Which is fine, though humorously this pairs nicely with another thread on HN this morning about HS critical thinking courses around journalism, quite well.

> I see Snopes as pure, unadulterated bias Could you please elaborate? I have never seen them described like this.

I see it stated all the time, but whenever I ask why, instead of a substantial argument, I get downvotes or "isn't it obvious?" or some thinly veiled "how dare they debunk something I wanted to be true.".

The plagiarism accusation is interesting and should be resolved, but isn't evidence of misinformation or evidence that they are less reliable than [no known alternative] suggested by critics.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#399

Post by ALittleLight »

zamadatix wrote: post #397
ALittleLight wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume Sweden's high rape rate is based on their counting and reporting practices. Have you looked through the counting and reporting methods for all other countries in Europe and standardized them to reach this conclusion? To me, as someone who hasn't looked at the crime reporting and counting methods of all the countries of Europe, this sounds like a possible explanation, maybe even a likely one, but possible e…

It's not my idea, it's the central conclusion of the study you were replying about which sought to investigate this exact line of questions https://www.bra.se/bra-in-english/home/news-from-bra/archive...

I didn't mean "You" in my previous comment to make it seem like this was your idea or interpretation. I'm aware it is a popular explanation of Sweden's rape rate and the one endorsed by their own National Council for Crime Prevention. I was just trying to refer to "You" in the sense of the argument you are putting forward.

The summary of the report makes the case that, if Sweden used Germany's system for counting and reporting rapes then Sweden would only have 1.5x Germany's rape rate as opposed to their current 6.3x Germany's rape rate. Further, the summary claims, Sweden would fall from "Rape Capitol" to "Somewhere in the middle" by which they apparently mean "Somewhere in the upper quartile."

Okay, so - obvious question here - Do all the other countries use Germany's methods for counting and reporting rapes? Maybe if you applied German methods to every country in Europe then Sweden would still be at the top of the list? Am I missing where in the report they cover this?

Intuitively, I'm pretty skeptical when an organization that has a big problem does some figuring and says "Actually - not that big a problem." Maybe the analysis is right and Sweden's high rate of rape is entirely/mainly a statistical consequence of expansive definitions and aggressive counting. But, from what I know of bureaucracies, I'd be pretty surprised if the Crime Prevention Council called in a guy to do a report on their high crime numbers and he came up with an answer of the form "Yeah, this is terrible."

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#400

Post by [deleted] »

snypher wrote: post #377
deertick1 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem silly at all to me : the known risks of covid are pretty tolerable. Death rate is extremely low for my demographic. So lets say I have a 30% chance of getting covid without a vax and a .1% chance of serious long term illness or death from covid. Now If I get the vaccine, I have a 1% chance of getting covid, and.01% chance of serioues injury or death + an unkown chance of unkown serious health complicatio…

You imply that the long term risks of covid-19 are known, so conflating the unknown/imaginary risks of both, that leaves getting the vaccine a better deal, because 'you have less change of getting sick'.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN