U of R professor shares tips on spotting, debunking misinformation during fourth wave

Misinformation is out there, and it’s up to you to choose what to believe.

Yet, a University of Regina professor who specializes in misinformation is urging you to do your own research, and make sure you take a look at who you’re getting your facts from.

“You do see changes in how the conversation is going,” Dr. Gordon Pennycook told 650 CKOM Thursday, speaking with respect to the fourth wave of COVID in Saskatchewan.

“As the number of people who haven’t been vaccinated is kind of, dwindling. It’s feeling more and more of a kind of extreme issue. Especially in relation to the increased focus on vaccine mandates and what ailment of that is this kerfuffle around ivermectin, the alternatives that have been pushed by some people.”

The use of ivermectin was used as an example by Pennycook as a change in what misinformation is out there. He adds that the “fever pitch” of misinformation hasn’t stopped since the beginning of the pandemic.

“When people are creating this information, it’s to fill a niche in the market. There’s been skepticism of COVID since the outset. It became increasingly polarized, politically. Now there’s people who have been dealing with this issue, and talking about it and engaging with misinformation for over a year now,” he explained.

Pennycook categorized it as a self-reinforcing type of cycle. He said people who don’t want to get vaccinated or don’t want to wear a mask have lots of opportunities to find information consistent with what they want to believe.

When looking back at the example of the use of ivermectin, Pennycook said the people who make the drug are telling people not to use it — regardless of the profits they’d make.

“People who are profiting off the misinformation about it are those people who make money by people listening to them. People who run Facebook pages or personalities, people who have gained a following because they have a particular stance on COVID … (people) hear what they want to hear,” he explained.

Spotting, detecting, debunking misinformation

People are pretty good at intuitively recognizing misinformation, according to Pennycook’s research.

“Often, misinformation, you can tell based on the style of it. It’s not professional, it looks like it’s something that someone came up with (in) 15 minutes,” he said.

“People tend not to pay attention to news sources. We ran an experiment, as an example, where we showed people some news headlines — some were true, some were false.”

In this study, Pennycook said they were given the sources of where the news came from — such as the Washington Post or the New York Times.

For the misinformation, people were given sources such as “Now 8 News,” or others that were completely unknown.

“If you take those sources and remove them, it has no impact whatsoever on people’s willingness to share those headlines or ability to recognize what’s true or false, because they’re not really judging accuracy based on sources. They’re judging it on based on their guesses whether it’s true or not,” Pennycook explained.

He said this is a big problem because looking at the source is the easiest and best way to figure out the reliability of the information.

Pennycook added that knowing this if you see a claim and you’re not sure if it’s true or false, look up other sources making similar claims.

“We see what the evidence is. If it’s corroborated across a bunch of different sources, then it’s probably accurate. Things that are false, if you look them up, in many cases — especially if they’re really viral, false things — there will already be fact-checks available,” he said.

“The key thing that people don’t do apart from looking at the sources is, stopping and reflecting even for a moment, considering if the thing they’re sharing is accurate. People share things without even thinking if they’re true or not, in many cases.”

A large piece of the movement of misinformation, according to Pennycook, is often the stuff you’re most likely to fall for is the stuff you want to be true.

“In many cases, people have to learn to recognize if it’s too good to be true. This is something you really want to be true, (which) means that’s something that probably requires extra skepticism. That’s the thing you wouldn’t normally spend your time questioning, whether it’s true because you want it to be true,” he said.

“That’s when you have to be on your toes the most.”