Just The Facts Ma'am

That's all Joe Friday ever wanted. Just the facts. But I think he was asking more of people than they could give. His aim was to take all opinion out of the story being relayed to him. The only thing he was interested in was a description of the events that the witness observed. Just the facts.

That's not how things work however. Distinctions between “fact”ⁱ and “belief” may be difficult to identify, and there are also the problems of “opinion”ⁱⁱ and previous experiences unrelated to the current question entirely, but governing the way one interprets it. Not to mention confabulation and prevarication secondary to potential benefit from remembering an event in a way favorable to one of the participants, or fear of the consequences of an accurate recounting of what was observed.

And all of this presumes that the observer is accurate and remembers what he saw. But that's not at all certain.ⁱⁱⁱ What we see is based on what we expect to see, what we want to see,^iv and what we have seen in the past, as much as what has actually taken place. Numerous studies call into question the accuracy of eyewitnesses. Juries may believe the word of an “honest citizen” rather that of a “criminal,” but eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.

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One of society's big problems nowadays^v is bullying. The most obvious kind relates to physical abuse, but it's not the most common. Chalk that up to verbal violence.^vi One child will belittle the ideas of another as evidence of his own superiority, often using “facts” that he has made up. Whether we agree with his view or not is beside the point. We may not believe there is a Tooth Fairy, but that is not proof that there is none; we may personally doubt the existence of Santa Claus, but as Francis Church pointed out to Virginia,^vii in fact, there is one. Scientific documentation may not always be obtainable, and it is not always necessary.

The most important question then is what constitutes a fact. The word itself is from the Latin factum – something done – and, consequently, refers to something that is true: provable, demonstrable, observable, repeatable, and has predictive value.^viii Most of the definitions are variations on this idea – that a fact is true and verifiable.

But that's not all on the subject. For example, Collins's World English Dictionary^ix includes in its definition of fact: “philosophy a proposition that may be either true or false, as contrasted with an evaluative statement,” and, when it comes to legal issues, “(q)uestions of fact are decided by the jury, questions of law by the court or judge.” And one of the statements of the Merriam Webster Third New International Dictionary^x is that a fact is a statement “purporting to contain something having objective reality.” Purporting. So the claim that something is a fact doesn't make it true, and it doesn't guarantee that it should be believed. Label something as a fact, though, and most people will consider you a fool if you don't accept it. Evaluation is no longer necessary.^xi Once everyone believes something is a fact, it is a fact.

But, as James Randi said, “No amount of belief makes something a fact.”^xii Randi has spent his life disproving beliefs, maintaining that only scientifically approved facts are worthy of acceptance. Facts like the four elements and phlogiston. Facts like the centrality of the earth in the universe. And, of course, facts about matters visible to all and known by all – like the fact that the earth is flat. That's certainly reproducible. But not all of science's past judgments are still believed.

For facts are really beliefs, some of which have mathematical or scientific basis and some of which are demonstrable and observable. But there are other facts for which there is no scientific foundation. That doesn't mean they are untrue. There were electrons before they were first demonstrated, and the sun was the center^xiii of our solar system even before Copernicus, but we couldn't prove it. And there were cells before Hooke, and laws of physics before Newton. There was even Truth before there was mathematics.

But we consider facts to be theories until we have the tools to “prove” them. Whether the proof is by direct visualization or an inference from mathematical theory, it takes a tool^xiv to make something into a fact. And it takes belief, Randi notwithstanding.

For some, the written word constitutes fact. Will Rogers averred: “All I know is just what I read in the papers.”^xv Unfortunately newspapers have their own agendas, and most reporters adjust their dispatches to coincide with the publication's philosophy. And many – “advocacy journalists” – present their own biases intermixed with the hard news. Even stories of scientific advances are notoriously unreliable.

Others prefer to make their own decisions without direction from journalists who may be biased. All they want to see are the pictures, whose content they'll judge for themselves. No captions are necessary. They ignore the fact that the pictures may be censored by some regimes, and those that do appear in the papers are chosen by the same people they don't trust for text. And Photoshop has ended the reliability of photos forever.

What, then, are facts? The best I can do is to view them as strongly held beliefs which may or may not have evidence to support them. Skeptics like Randi will often dispute the evidence anyway, but no one is required to accept his definition of truth any more than he accepts that of others. Before Einstein, Newton's laws of physics were indisputable. Who knows if Einstein's will be disproved. What we now believe science proves, may ultimately be shown to be wrong, but we are not compelled to use the scientific playing field in any case. The spiritual field is just as valid, as is the perspective of a particular culture. Facts are not as cut and dried as Sgt. Friday would have us believe.^xvi Nor are beliefs.

One thing is clear however. No amount of fact invalidates a belief. Even Randi's belief in the incontestable credibility of science.

Next episode: “Proportionality” – The measure of all things can't be measured.

I        As will become clear, I don't always place what people call “facts” in high esteem. I usually view them as having scare quotation marks, but using those at all times would be unwieldy in an essay of this sort. So don't look for them, but understand that I often don't take them seriously, and neither should you.

ii        Some might even say bias.

iii        You can fool some of the people all of the time.

iv        And we remember what we want to remember.

v        It's not a new problem at all, but all of a sudden it's become one of our major concerns. We should have dealt with it a long time ago.

vi       The persistence of this form of abuse into marriage is beyond the scope of this endeavor.

vii      Editorial in the New York Sun, September 21, 1897.

viii     Actually that's not completely accurate (though it will do for our purposes). “Fact,” comes from “factum” derived from Latin facere, and describes something that has happened. Already. So it's not really a fact that “the sun will come up tomorrow” – despite Annie's protestations. Based on our experience, however, we believe it to be true. But fact and truth are not synonyms.

ix       www.collinsdictionary.com

x        Springfield, Massachusetts, 1971.

xi       You can fool all of the people some of the time.

xii      http://www.atheistrepublic.com/gallery/no-amount-belief-makes-something-fact-james-randi

xiii     Well not really the center, but close enough. Certainly all the planets rotate around it. As far as we know.

xiv      Like a magnifying glass or electron microscope.

xv      Rogers only feigned his simplistic trust. He knew the papers were full of nonsense and used them as a comic prop. In fact, he viewed “just what I read in the papers” as “an alibi for my ignorance.”

xvi      You can't fool all of the people all of the time.

The Times They Are a-Changin'

Happy Groundhog's Day.

It struck me yesterday that it was a good time to make predictions, about the weather in the next few months and the Super Bowl to be played today. But the prediction I make will be on a different subject: The New York Times will be in the sunlight but continue to drop the ball.

Around the world, the Times is viewed as the standard for journalistic excellence. Certainly that's the way its staff and publisher view themselves. And they're sure that their opinions are similarly enlightened, only rarely printing dissenting views – and even then apparently with the aim of eliciting reactions which will set the errant commentator or correspondent right by familiarizing him with “truth.” That truth will be provided by readers who will set the confused writer straight. Those who argue are, after all, disputing the “newspaper of record.”

And, indeed, the paper may be the holder of a significant journalistic record, though it isn't surprising if it's not a record that others in the media will fight to take away. Even if they are more “worthy” of it, none is likely to challenge “the gray lady” for bragging rights in the field of making mistakes. I looked, last night and this morning, at the paper's record over the last full month – January, 2014 – to get a sense of how often it erred, since I have long questioned the accuracy of the purveyor of “all the news that's fit to print.” What I found were two hundred ninety corrections of articles and pictures. (Some of the articles had more than one correction, so the number is really higher.) It's hardly a rigorous scientific survey, but on an annualized basis (290 times twelve months), and assuming that January was a typical month, that's nearly three thousand five hundred errors in a year. If I'm off by a few hundred in either direction, though, it doesn't change the meaning of the findings. I don't mean to suggest that they were all significant mistakes (they weren't), but that there is a problem in the paper to which people turn for accuracy – a paper that people trust. The trust may be misplaced. The automatic assumption that what it says is true is invalid.

Adding to the problem are some other concerns. The corrections are merely the errors to which they admit. They can't deny them. There are others of which they are notified that they dispute or disclaim. (I once had a letter published in the Times in which there was a misquotation of my words, and I had a long fight with them before it was corrected.) They “stand by” their positions even though serious questions may be raised about what they have reported. And I suspect there are additional misstatements that are not brought to their attention by readers, and others which they prefer not to advertise if they have discovered them on their own. It's not likely that the paper's ombudsman would turn them in, or that they would admit to what they could finesse. Even if a correction were to be made, a small print statement, after the fact, and on an inside page is less likely to be read or taken seriously than the original statement. That initial statement will have a far greater impact than the clarification.

The problem as stated, however, only refers to the facts. It's harder to deny errors of fact than admit to illogical or misleading opinions. Such opinions, reflecting the positions (biases) of the staff of the paper, remain as testaments to their point of view irrespective of the strength of their arguments (or its lack) and the reasoning of those who disagree. They're less likely than facts to be disputed because they are labeled as opinion, and because the opinions coincide with those of most of the readership. After all, that's why they buy the paper. They already favor that point of view. But their opinions, though just as inclined (or more so) to be questionable as are many of their “facts,” are likely to get a free pass. And they will play a large part in creating the views of those readers who have not yet formed their own opinions and are ready to accept the judgment of what they see as the source of wisdom. Even when it is not Groundhog's Day, the gray lady operates largely in the shadows.

And that's the way it will probably remain. The Times's reputation will not suffer from it's sloppiness, lack of fact-checking and biases, but rather it will receive praise for its willingness to correct the errors it has made. And that willingness will raise the reputation of the paper rather than triggering a reevaluation based on the errors themselves. A party that is favored always gets the benefit of the doubt.

And there will be six more weeks of winter.