Fake News, Alternative Facts, Post-Truths, Misinformation, Misinterpretation-and Other Challenges Associated With Knowledge Generation.

Abstract

Fake News, Alternative Facts, Post-Truths, Misinformation, Misinterpretation—and Other Challenges Associated With Knowledge Generation Peter V. Paul, Editor Well, by now you have been exposed to either new words for your mental lexicon or, perhaps, old words that crop up in your face while you're reading the newspapers and accounts from other popular media. For starters, there is the encroachment of fake news, alternative facts, and post-truths, which spawn misinformation and misinterpretation and pose a formidable challenge to the generation and documentation of reliable and valid knowledge. Situated in our ivory towers and PK–12 classrooms, we are not immune to these anti-truth threats. I have no doubt that these threats have existed since the beginning of recorded history (albeit there should be a "fact check" here …). In addition, I do not think that all scientists or scholars always take the high road and resist the temptation to stretch the truth for financial or scholarly gain. However, I feel the most pain when dishonesty is discovered in the reporting of data and findings in journals or books. I am not crazy about plagiarism, either. Neil Postman (1985) admonished us about the dangers of diminishing intelligent public discourse in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Basically, his argument was that television—with its penchant for entertainment at all costs—was short-circuiting our patience and our proclivity to engage in critical analytical discourse. Now we have the Internet and social media contributing to this phenomenon, and entertainment may only be part of the reason. Actually, we should not blame television or the Internet per se, mainly because these are technological tools and outlets to be used at our disposal (assuming that we are still in control of them). The manner in which we use this technology can have either negative or positive outcomes. In any case, I will update Postman's dictum by stating that we are actually "amusing and deluding ourselves to death." All of this commotion reminds me of one of my PK–12 teaching experiences. About fifteen thousand moons ago, during a school year in hot, sunny Florida, I taught science (and other subjects) to d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/Dhh) upper elementary-age children. Unfortunately, science was only offered two days per week (that's another editorial). I am certain that I was not the ideal person to teach science. (Of course, science and mathematics were not exactly popular subjects—and I fear that that might be the case now as well.) In any event, I justified my teaching of science by reasoning that (1) I was deaf—thus a role model, and (2) I was a wannabe-scholar—thus a role model. It surely was not the case that I was an expert in an area of science or was on the cutting edge of advancing knowledge about conceptual change theory or conceptual understanding—a model that emerged much later (e.g., Vosniadou, Baltas, & Vamvakoussi, 2007). I was not even a staunch proponent of cognitive constructivism—an aspect of the inquiry approach, in my opinion—and a framework often used now in science and mathematics. Ultimately, I suspected that I was the ideal person because of my constant discussion of weird constructs in the teacher's lounge. I had just completed reading (for the first time) a few of Ayn Rand's ideas (i.e., the ones that I like) about the value of philosophy, particularly the emphasis on objectivity and logic—for example, see the updated and expanded second edition of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (Rand, 1979/1990). Thus, these teachers—and anyone else who was polite and bothered to listen to me—could see the seeds of my ongoing, lifelong excitement about something called knowledge generation. My thinking about knowledge, or epistemology, has certainly evolved—as exemplified by a recent publication (Paul & Moores, 2012). However, this construct was just as complicated and convoluted then as it is now. At that time, for the classroom science lesson I decided to lean on an approach that I thought was reflective of a [End Page 3] scientist (or a wanna-be scholar), namely, the use of the scientific method. What else...