
Oft-quoted paper on spread of fake news is retracted - danso
https://retractionwatch.com/2019/01/09/oft-quoted-paper-on-spread-of-fake-news-turns-out-to-befake-news/
======
minimaxir
> “Our work is not fake news,” Filippo Menczer, a professor of informatics and
> computer science at Indiana University and a coauthor of the study, told
> BuzzFeed News. “In the moment that we found the error, we immediately
> contacted the editors to retract it. It was our own initiative. We were not
> trying to trick anyone. This is how science works.”

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/fake-
news...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/fake-news-study-
retraction)

~~~
m0zg
>> we immediately contacted the editors to retract it.

And that's how the most effective fake news works. A tiny fraction of the
people who see (and spread) the original article will ever see the retraction.
And ever fewer will spread it.

~~~
thatoneuser
That’s true, but it’s an unavoidable consequence of research publication. You
don’t produce new science and hold onto it for years waiting to see if someone
challenges your non-published result.

Alternatively, I think fake news is artificially engineered to achieve the
effect. So unless this group was deliberately producing fake conclusions I
personally wouldn’t call them fake news.

~~~
m0zg
I'm not even talking about research publication. I'm talking about today's
mainstream press. The algorithm there is simple: issue a bombastic, click
grabbing "story", let people generate traffic (and ad revenue) for a few days.
Then either change the article, or delete it, or issue a milquetoast
"retraction".

A team I ran at one of my past jobs was interviewed by NYTimes once. What was
published was extremely editorialized to drive clicks, and as a result bore
little resemblance to what people actually said. We didn't even bother asking
for a retraction, but after that incident I've been extremely distrustful of
basically everything I read in the media, no matter the source, unless I see
direct, unedited evidence. And even then I'm distrustful if evidence appears
to be taken out of context, which it is at least 90% of the time. I just wish
the "journalists" would stop killing their own profession, and start behaving
like adults. The only prominent voice I trust these days is Glenn Greenwald.

------
tombert
I think the title of this article is a bit unfair; pretty much all of our
understanding of science is going to be wrong at some level at some point in
time, either due to mistakes in the experimentation, or in this case a
software bug; good scientists realize this and issue corrections or retract
the paper. Doesn't "fake news" imply dishonesty?

~~~
danso
Not necessarily, which is why I've always disliked the term, even apart from
how it's used so often as to be meaningless rhetoric. Plenty of people might
take "fake" to mean _false_ , regardless of intent. And I would also argue
that "fake news" can also be interpreted to mean that something
mundane/previously known is falsely insinuated to be shocking "news" e.g.
"Barack Obama discovered to have lived with single white teen mom", which is
technically true (his mother was white and living alone at the time of his
birth), but the intent of the headline is obviously to imply scandal.

That said, I don't think it's normal for a "software bug" to result in such an
egregious error as to require a retraction of the study. I'd like to know why
the peer review process failed to detect the problem.

~~~
LamaOfRuin
>That said, I don't think it's normal for a "software bug" to result in such
an egregious error as to require a retraction of the study. I'd like to know
why the peer review process failed to detect the problem.

Only because most papers never get the work checked at that level. Software
bugs causing errors in studies is extremely common. There's a reason a tiny
tiny fraction of researchers share their code without kicking and screaming,
and it's not because they'll be scooped on their next paper if they do. (I'm
slightly jaded here)

~~~
wasdfff
In what field? I work in research and people love to share their software and
have you cite their tools in your papers. Software has no chance of being
popular or vetted enough to become a standard without sharing it.

------
thomasmeeks
It demeans the scientific process to call this fake news. If you want fake
news to stop, probably don’t do that.

But it is true that it is a difficult battle to fight.

~~~
MarsAscendant
You can be cheeky and still take the matter seriously. Just 'cause the paper
describes (or, used to describe?) a serious problem, doesn't mean one has to
tread carefully around such an obvious foundation for situational humor.

~~~
thomasmeeks
I don't believe that is true. I've witnessed too much satire of that sort
become reality, both offline and online. Of course, I can't speak to the rate
at which it is harmful.

~~~
MarsAscendant
I believe you're exaggerating the threat a laugh at the "fake-newsness" of a
scientific study about fake news can bring.

One can't account for everyone, but there's no conversation to be had _ever_ ,
about *anything, if you automatically presume that the other person is not at
least somewhat serious about the subject matter and does not care about it at
least a little bit.

I'm sure grown men and women will not lose their capacity for critical
thinking after a laugh. If anything, the humor's role is to relieve tension.
Maybe it would enhance the conversation.

Not that there is any, at the moment. The paper got retracted, and we know
why, and we know the reason wasn't a matter of falsification, but in the
following of the ethics of science. The way I see it, there are other subjects
around the news that are worth considering – for example, as someone in the
comments has already mentioned, how come the bug hasn't been noticed before.

~~~
thomasmeeks
I believe we have very different personal experiences with this sort of thing.
I'm jealous of you! I am constantly surprised at how many people are very much
not serious about a subject -- even when they think they are -- because they
are more interested in winning than learning.

I am, of course, guilty of this all the time. The nuanced difference is when
the individual no longer cares about correcting that vice (I know because,
well, they've said so).

You're right, I am exaggerating the danger. I will assert, however, that the
danger is nonzero and deserves more than dismissal. Mostly I urge thought
about how the weight of these sorts of jokes can subtly affect the perceptions
of people rather than insisting on the triviality of a single event.

------
cbsmith
This is so deliciously meta... news about the spread of fake news appears to
itself be fake news, and the spread of said fake news displays all the
properties described in the paper.

~~~
ajross
Wrong science is not "fake news". A retraction by an author isn't a refutation
by an antagonist. The conflation of the two, however, is definitely on the
spectrum.

They messed up and told everyone so. That's pretty much the opposite of
propaganda falsehoods.

~~~
rjf72
I think the key point here is that nobody knows _precisely_ what fake news is,
so we all create our own often times incompatible definitions. This probably
goes back to the source of the word. The terms usage seems to have been
organized by mainstream media outlets to attack smaller sites. If that sounds
controversial check out the trends on the term [1]. It was a basically
nonexistent term, in spite of what it means having been a thing for many
years, which then spiked to ubiquity everywhere in a matter of days. That
reeks of collusion.

And so does it's demise. The term backfired and began to be used against
mainstream sites when they ran articles that were 'factually challenged'. And
though 'fake news' has hardly faded, now that the big players have almost
entirely stopped using the term - as quickly as they had chosen to start using
it in the first place, it's trending back to 0. You even now have articles
such as CNN suggesting we "ban the term 'fake news'" [2], a WaPo columnist
suggesting, "It’s time to retire the tainted term 'fake news.'", and so on.
[3].

The moral of the story being just yet another telling of Frankenstein. 'Fake
news' as a term probably did well in focus tests, but once the term was used
in the wild it took on a life of its own leading those that created it to
desire nothing other than its extermination.

[1] -
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=f...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=fake%20news)

[2] - [https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/26/opinions/fake-news-and-
di...](https://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/26/opinions/fake-news-and-
disinformation-opinion-wardle-derakhshan/index.html)

[3] - [https://www.wired.com/2017/02/internet-made-fake-news-
thing-...](https://www.wired.com/2017/02/internet-made-fake-news-thing-made-
nothing/)

~~~
cbsmith
The other key point here is that it's a lot funnier if you choose one
particular interpretation.

------
mkumm6
Anyone else here not even bother reading about new psychology findings? Ever
since learning about the "replication crisis" and seeing how so much popular
psychology has fallen victim to it (e.g. priming, ego depletion, power poses,
impicit bias, stereotype threat)

I wonder if news organizations will bring in rules not to report on them until
there's been a number of successful replications. They just mislead people.

------
dilawar
Glad that authors retracted it by themselves. Surprised that no one found the
mistake in such a popular paper for so long.

~~~
rjf72
It's confirmation bias. When you want something to be true because it confirms
your biases, most people are not going to actively try to refute it. This is
one big argument for avoiding ideological homogeneity in academia. Homogeneity
reduces the quality of work since ideas that are not properly supported are
less challenged than they would be in cases where ones idea goes against the
biases of other researchers.

Consider the replication crisis in psychology as another embodiment of this.
This was all really started when a replication study attempted to replicate a
number of impactful studies from top tier psychology journals. It turns out
that 64% of all studies, including 74% of social psychology studies, could not
be replicated. That means if somebody actually tried to replicate any given
study, they'd more likely than not find it was dodgy. But nobody did this,
because there was not much motivation to do it. Refuting others' studies hurts
them, likely creates enemies for you, and doesn't do all that much for your
own career.

It's a messed up system that basically needs ideological heterogeneity to
create that motivation needed to ensure good quality. But such heterogeneity
is practically nonexistent in many soft sciences now a days, and to some
degree the problem is even starting to seep into the hard sciences.

------
BadassFractal
Seems exactly how researchers should behave in this case? Putting the search
for truth ahead of potential reputation hits. In my eyes at least, this makes
me more likely to trust them, as I know they're standing behind their work.

------
CM30
Now the question lies in how far said retraction will be spread. How many of
the news sites who posted about this paper in the past will post about the
retraction as well?

That's a huge issue with finding credible media sources nowadays. Depressingly
few will admit they're wrong/update an incorrect story, and those that do will
barely advertise that.

------
dredmorbius
Archive:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190110014608/https://retractio...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190110014608/https://retractionwatch.com/2019/01/09/oft-
quoted-paper-on-spread-of-fake-news-turns-out-to-befake-news/)

(Source appears hugged to death.)

~~~
danso
The notice as it appears in the original journal can be found here (though it
lacks the context about how this study was popularly shared/written about):
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0507-0](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-018-0507-0)

~~~
nkurz
Adding another layer of complexity, versions of the paper both pre- and post-
retraction are available on arXiv:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.02694](https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.02694)

It wasn't clear from the RetractionWatch page that the authors think that at
least some form of the paper is still worth republishing.

------
code_duck
I would love to never hear that term again.

~~~
sn41
Yes, I prefer the term "rumor". But maybe that is not persuasive enough, hence
the emphasis using "fake".

~~~
code_duck
Where do you envision that term being applied exactly?

It would make sense if the term was only leveled against specific news that is
not based on openly verifiable fact. However, some individuals use it to refer
to entire news organizations, seemingly ones that oppose their views, while
not applying it to other organizations that clearly have the same or lower
standards for verifiability.

