TWITTER has suggested fact-checking two of US President Donald Trump’s tweets and it makes the headlines of most papers.
Now President Trump is issuing an executive order to remedy the situation, including possibly shutting down Twitter.
The Washington Post has a list of apparently18,000 false or misleading claims by the President and yet they are still publishing – maybe they should be careful of a fire-and-brimstone response in the near future. Maybe the truth should be published and be subject to being checked.
In this line I did some online searches for interesting facts to review. Fact Check: I didn’t, I just went with what I already know.
These are some of more popular online facts that I couldn’t fact-check reliably:
* The earth is flat.
* We didn’t go to the moon.
* Lizard people rule the world.
There are hundreds of other items online that I have some doubt about although I would be happy if Elvis were still alive. These are some facts that seem to escape many people:
* Your child is not the most important person in the world.
* Being good on a sports field doesn’t give you the right to be bad off it.
* Influencers don’t influence me.
* Dumb people and their opinions are more common than you think.
On a more serious side, we also need to accept that vaccinations do work, the 5G network didn’t spread the COVID-19 virus and couldn’t.
We need to know the truth although we might not be able to handle it.
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Don’t be a sucker
The COVID-19 pandemic has swiftly spread around the world although misinformation and bogus treatments have probably spread faster through the world of social media.
Scientists were still getting their test tubes out by the time non-scientific cures and bogus treatments were being sold on the internet, but we know where the real answers will come from. Or at least we should know.
Perhaps the oddest story relating to bogus and untested treatments is that of the ex-Madagascar Minister of Education Rijasoa Andriamanana who planned to buy over two million dollars’ worth of lollipops to help make a herbal treatment less bitter when given to school children.
Don’t they know that all good medicine tastes bad – actually that’s an urban myth rather than a fact but people believe these things too easily. We need to wait till scientists, hopefully, develop a vaccine and spread that around the world. Ignore the internet wisdom and look for accurate scientific sources of information. (dfitzger@melbpc.org.au/PN)
