In today’s Rose Cafe with Professor Schwarz, we discussed the importance of careful consumption of information with much attention focused on the different kinds of fake news and biased news we might encounter. This is an issue that recent events have brought into focus, though inaccurate or premature news stories are by no means new.

I was interested to hear about Okrent’s Law, which states that certain opinions are not worth reporting on because they argue without evidence against something that is clearly true. When Professor Schwarz introduced this idea, I was initially a little concerned that this could be used as justification for censorship of the kind that the church once imposed on thinkers like Galileo who challenged the universally accepted “truth” of a geocentric universe. However, I realized as Professor Schwarz continued that what we’re talking about in this case are arguments without scientific basis, such as denials of evolution or climate change. This relieved some of my concerns about the suppression of new ideas (which is also something we touched on a little).

It was also interesting to consider CV padding as a kind of fake news that students and faculty might create to advance their own goals. While this particularly brand of misinformation is certainly not as malicious as inventions like McCarthyism and Pizzagate, it is perhaps more relevant to us at Cornell. It is valuable to consider our own contributions to the truth in how we present ourselves and the world around us.