Let's take a look at my email box for 3 classic tactic of disinformation:
We'll look past the obvious sarcasm, but it's such a great example on how people who don't care about the truth can create problems for those that do.
Here's the three key strategies.
(...)
We'll look past the obvious sarcasm, but it's such a great example on how people who don't care about the truth can create problems for those that do.
Here's the three key strategies.
(...)
First: "Gish gallop". Each of the sentence has a number of statements of various levels of truth & evidence. Each are extremely complex and deep discussions. Throwing all these out at once at me & asking me to respond create an immense burden for those who care about evidence./2
I've highlighted all of the various topics, ideas, and notions. Many of these statements require considerable nuance, some are simply not supported by the evidence, and others are. Sometimes evidence supports the individual statement but not the thesis (ie lockdowns cause)
/3
/3
For me to spend effort explaining the nuances and realities of, for example, the increase of overdoses during the pandemic, honestly, would take a long time. I've done it multiple times on twitter and it's never easily contained in even a few tweets.
/4
/4
For example, some states saw an increase in youth overdose deaths, some didn't. BC had as many in '20 (18) as '18 (18) but less than '17 (26), yet 2021 with less restrictions saw more (29). Ontario had less admissions for youth overdose.
jamanetwork.com
/5
jamanetwork.com
/5
The next is "sealioning". Sealioning is relentlessly persuing people for evidence, in a very harrassing style. True to form, this person continues to send emails to my responses asking me for evidence. my timeline is full of interesting evidence.
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/6
A great tactic to combat/identify sealioning & gishgallop is to simply use this great tactic (from the amazing Steven Novella):
Ask for their SINGLE best piece of evidence they would like to discuss.
Sealions & gishgallopers have no interest in this, and can be disregarded. /7
Ask for their SINGLE best piece of evidence they would like to discuss.
Sealions & gishgallopers have no interest in this, and can be disregarded. /7
Finally, he uses "rhetorical questioning". He isn't asking questions, nor does he care about my responses at all. He's using questions to place a burden on me to respond, when he's simply spouting what he thinks.
/8
/8
The reason all of these works is because of a principal called brandolini's law, or "the bullshit asymmetry principle", in that the effort it would take for me to respond to a misinformation claim is singificantly more effort than simply making the claim.
/9
/9
Saying "record increases in youth drug overdoses" is easy. Spending the time to review the evidence on youth substance use, abuse, and overdose is an entire scientific paper!
/10
/10
Unsurprisingly, this emailer would only waste my time to seriously engage in, but the good news is that they can serve as an example of misinformation and disinformation principles that are very important to know if you care about the truth and good evidence.
/Fin
/Fin
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