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Fake news, fact checking and peer review

The BBC recently reported that former President Donald Trump quoted Patrick Moore, who he claimed was a founder of Greenpeace, saying, “The whole climate crisis is only fake news”. How do ordinary citizens know if this statement and others like it are true or false? The following are independent expert fact-checking methods accessible to anyone. I urge everyone to use these and similar respected sources before accepting suspicious claims in social media. Snopes.com explores rumours and questionable claims in social media and other sources, and decides if a particular rumour is true or false. For instance, a recent photograph showing President Trump allegedly being arrested for hush money was deemed false because the Manhattan jury has yet to file charges against Trump.

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Reuters.com is a mainstream media organisation which operates its own factchecking on headline matters. A recent claim that dinosaurs did not exist and that fossils were replicas made of chicken bones was fact-checked with three world experts who all confirmed the claim was false. Climatefeedback.org is an accessible worldwide network of experts and scientists sorting fact from fiction in climate change media coverage. Its goal is to help readers know which news to trust. It has recently analysed and rejected a statement by The Epoch News (Joe Rogan) which suggested that human factors in climate change were not proven, and that climate change is happening anyway. The site presented decisive data showing the sharp divergent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the industrial revolution

(after 1850), published by the US National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA).

Peer review

A second question is how do science and scientists decide if a particular claim or data is true or false? The answer lies in the process of peer review. There is a saying in science that “data is golden” and opinion without data has no value. Opinions on social media without sound data must be dismissed by readers. Fifty years ago, a respected scientist reported a new form of water with quite different properties formed in tiny glass capillaries, which was quickly referred to in the media as “polywater”. This report generated global paranoia that this polywater could convert all water in the planet into polywater and so threaten all life on Earth. The capillary polywater data was then re-investigated by a distinguished chemist from Princeton University using a new laser-based analytical method which could explore microscopic capillary samples. This laser method revealed that the surprising properties of the water in the fine capillaries were due to glass surface contaminants and not due to a new and different form of water. This controversy inspired a famous novel Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut about Ice 9, which was polywater by a different name.

The basic facts of climate change have been derived from massive bodies of detailed data reported by some of the most respected agencies and universities in the world, including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Authority, the journals Nature and Science, leading universities, the BBC and the Guardian.