How can neuroethics combat ‘fake news’?
by Michael Cook | 24 Jun 2017 |
Levy, who works at the University of Oxford and the University of Melbourne, argues that media literacy is not going to solve the problem of “fake news”.
For one thing, the response seems to require what it seeks to bring about: a better informed population. For another, while greater sophistication might allow us to identify many instances of fake news, some of it is well crafted enough to fool the most sophisticated (think of the recent report that the FBI was fooled by a possibly fabricated Russian intelligence report).
In Levy’s estimation, the problem is seriously intractable. Efforts to combat fake news with facts and arguments often strengthen false beliefs.
Familiarity – processing fluency, in the jargon of psychologists – influences the degree to which we come to regard a claim as plausible. Due to this effect, repeating urban legends in order to debunk them may leave people with a higher degree of belief in the legends than before. Whether for this reason or for others, people acquire beliefs from texts presented to them as fiction. In fact, they may be readier to accept that claims made in a fictional text are true of the real world than claims presented as factual.
If education won’t work, what is to be done? Disappointly Levy says, “I must confess I don’t know.” But he suggests that there should be more research into making true information more palatable through “informational nudges” or “nudges to reason”. This is a topic which he discussed at length in the Journal of Medical Ethics recently. Although he provides no details of what he has in mind, he contends that such nudges would be ethical because they lead people towards the truth:
Perhaps there are nudges that make us more sensitive to genuine evidence that work by bypassing our deliberative capacities, but at least some such nudges appeal to capacities that are partially constitutive of these capacities. There is therefore no more reason to worry that such nudges undermine our autonomy or responsible agency than that arguments generally threaten these things.
| |
 | |
Saturday, June 24, 2017
|
There is plenty of variety in this week’s BioEdge: a euthanasia pioneer surveys its progress in the Netherlands; a neuroethicist despairs over ‘fake news’; a legal expert assesses the chances of Noel Conway’s assisted dying request in the UK; an important new paper asks whether puberty suppression for transgender kids is ethical...
But the big news is that BioEdge (and its editor) are taking a solstitial holiday for a few weeks. The next issue will arrive on about July 21.
Cheers,
Michael Cook
Editor
BioEdge
| NEWS THIS WEEK | |
by Michael Cook | Jun 24, 2017
What we need is effective 'nudges to reason', says Neil Levy
by Xavier Symons | Jun 24, 2017
The government of Texas will allow clinics across the state to market unapproved stem-cell therapies.
by Michael Cook | Jun 24, 2017
Did psychologists use data from torture to test their hypotheses?
by Michael Cook | Jun 24, 2017
Unless doctors are safe, they can't work; to be safe, they have to work for the Army
by Xavier Symons | Jun 24, 2017
The man who brought us the first three-parent baby is now going commercial.
by Michael Cook | Jun 24, 2017
Parents of transgender kids have enrolled them in a dangerous experiment
by Michael Cook | Jun 24, 2017
Safeguards for the mentally ill and the demented are slipping away
by Xavier Symons | Jun 24, 2017
Students are concerned about the impact of euthanasia on the medical landscape.| IN DEPTH THIS WEEK | |
by Clark Hobson | Jun 24, 2017
Although Parliament is clearly opposed, a way is opening in the courts
BioEdge
Suite 12A, Level 2 | 5 George St | North Strathfield NSW 2137 | Australia
Phone: +61 2 8005 8605
Mobile: 0422-691-615
Email: michael@bioedge.org
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario