8 ms·

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't sa

As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. Sometimes, citations are not specific enough (e.g., citing a huge book rather than the specific page with the evidence). So, better than giving a URL would be to give a URL with a "fragment" if possible, i.e., #id. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URI_fragment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URI_fragment Chrome can be even more specific now with this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-to-text-fragment/pbcodcjpfjdpcineamnnmbkkmkdpajjg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/link-to-text-fragm...

arp242 6y ago
> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. I have similar experiences with Wikipedia; if I want to know about something I generally go to Wikipedia first and just loads a bunch of the references. They usually pan out, but not infrequently the reference simply doesn't contain whatever the Wikipedia article claimed.
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
  One of the problems with Wikipedia is that the citation syntax does not require (it's possible but quite rare) specifying what part of the preceding text the citation relates to. As a result it often covers, deceptively, only part of the sentence it's attached to, or the paragraph it's attached to, and it can get worse with editing which doesn't account for the citation's content.
melvinroest 6y ago
This is exactly why I submitted [1] to HN, coincidentally a few hours ago. IMO, assertions should be computable (if possible) and backed by data. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23896279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23896279
- tW4r 6y ago
  I think this could be a great application for a DAG blockchain, with the axioms of a given scientific field as initial seed blocks. Then any proofs can be derived using the previous blocks, and, should any proof be disproved the whole sub chain depending on it would collapse and need to be rewritten “remined”
  - smt88 6y ago
    As always, this solution doesn't benefit from a blockchain structure. You could do the same thing with an immutable, publicly readable database. The currently unsolvable problem is that there is often disagreement about axioms and proofs bring disproved. Even mathematical proofs can be very controversial. This is one of many problems that humans can't solve yet, which means it's hard/impossible to teach computers to do it.
    - marcinzm 6y ago
      Axioms can also be mutually contradictory and this may not be obvious initially. Then you can prove and disprove everything at the same time.
      - smt88 6y ago
        If axioms are mutually contradictory, that doesn't actually prevent the concept of computing them and attaching them to logical chains. The core problem with computing them is that no machine can decide whether the axioms are contradictory in the first place. In most cases, even humans won't 100% agree.
    - Taek 6y ago
      Where does that immutability come from? If you have a centralized service controlling the flow of knowledge, this could have its own consequences. Maybe some sort of CRDT + gossip network? But at that point you are quite close to a blockchain. (Not that I'm confident such a thing is a good idea, but I do think that a decent portion of the blockchain stack makes sense given the idea)
monoclechris 6y ago
Often I see assertions that state the exact opposite of what the reference contains.
CM30 6y ago
I still remember one fake news site that took this to the extreme, in that it linked to a story that flat out didn't exist on the site it linked to. You clicked on the link, and you just ended up with a 404 error page. The fact that fooled anyone should probably give you a worrying insight into how many people are willing to trust/distrust links without even clicking on them. But yeah, either way, make sure the link actually goes somewhere, that it goes to a relevant page/article/video/whatever, and that said source does indeed say what the linking said says it does.
- ballenf 6y ago
  That's also a good reason for news orgs to have strict policies around never taking down articles or changing URLs. It happens enough to give cover to the behavior you cite. News sites could also replace their 404 page with an explanation "there used to be an article here, but we decided to remove it because ____" or "there's never been an article at this address".
  - btrettel 6y ago
    There's a HTTP status code for pages which were deleted: 410 Gone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#4xx_Client_errors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#4xx_... This was famously used by Mark Pilgrim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pilgrim#%22Disappearance%22_from_the_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pilgrim#%22Disappearance%...
    - elliekelly 6y ago
      Has anyone ever seen this in the wild? I didn’t even know it existed. Who knew there were so many different status codes.
      - btrettel 6y ago
        Seems that I edited my comment to add an example at the same time you posted yours.
clairity 6y ago
you should be able to make an argument without resting primarily and directly on other people's words, even if you largely rest on other people's ideas. whether it convinces any particular person is largely out of your control, and shouldn't consume the debate. citations don't change that calculus.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Citations can give data, though. If your ideas are based on more than just your own experience, you need external data.
  - clairity 6y ago
    but then you run into the old saw about damn lies and statistics. the argument needs to stand on its own and be taken in good faith, otherwise discussion is futile. (edit: that's not to say provide no links, just that it won't make the argument, per my other comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899088, ironically, a citation.)
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      If your argument is based on some fact (e.g. some number being above some threshold), then you absolutely need to back up that number to make the argument resolve into "it's most likely true". If you don't back the number up, then the argument resolves only to "if the data is indeed as argued, then it's most likely true". Keeping beliefs with free variables in them is fine, IMO, as long as you're careful about not accidentally collapsing them into an outcome without having first checked the dependencies.
      - clairity 6y ago
        sure, i'd go one step further and note that there are no absolute certainties, so those free variables always exist, even implicitly. in that vein, most threshold numbers like that should at least come with uncertainty bounds (damn lies and statistics). said another way, outside of math and formal logic, real-world arguments resolve at best to "if the data is indeed as argued, then it's most likely true" (perhaps gödel is relevant here, as @marcinzm referenced downthread[1], another citation!). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899111
c3534l 6y ago
I remember at a certain point I realized that the citations on cracked.com were often abused or flat out debunked the very thing the author claimed they did. I hadn't given up on the site yet, so I would post in the comments what the citations actually said. I'm still baffled by the generally negative reactions to doing so, but I do remember people saying things like "why should I trust you, some random dude in the comments, rather than a professional writer whose job it is to research these things?" Because it's a link to a website that anyone can read! But people will argue with you for 5 minutes rather than click on a link and read the surrounding few paragraphs to see that the writer took the source out of context.
- cogman10 6y ago
  Disinformation is pretty bad and hard to combat. The common game my family will play is "I've done my research and it's XYZ" When asked "Oh, what resources did you use to land on XYZ?" It's very frequently met with silence. The problem, as I see it, is that they'll read something on a facebook post which agrees with their existing biases. Over time they'll see the same thing reposted but with a slightly different twist and.. viola.. They've "researched" it. A good example of this is when anti-vaccination comes up. If you've done your research, you know that vaccines are safe[0], effective[1], don't cause autism[2] and pretty much a good thing for most everyone (excluding immunocompromised and the very VERY few people that react to vaccines). Yet, still, I'll run into family on facebook that have "done their research" on the matter and generally can only link back to some anti-vaxx blog post for evidence (if that, often nothing). What's worse, they'll completely dismiss any evidence to the contrary as being "shills", "biased", "payed off" or whatever other conspiracy theory they like. They've made the position their identity and refuting it makes them feel attacked. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html [1] https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/graph-us-measles-cases https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/graph-us... [2] https://vaccines.org.il/images/4/4e/Vaccines-are-not-associated-with-autism.pdf https://vaccines.org.il/images/4/4e/Vaccines-are-not-associa...
koheripbal 6y ago
What might be better would be some sort of reputation system. Something where I can see that other people that have looked into the person's citations confirm they actually say what they claim they say, on average (regardless of agreeing with their conclusions). Reputation is everything, and it's so incredibly scarce today. We could have different dimensions of Reputation (citation validity, logical argument validity, unsupported claim predictiveness, etc...)
- dqpb 6y ago
  Do you think reputation can be manipulated?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    It's funny how we circle back to reputation - or, in other words, authority. People like to point out "appeals to authority" as fallacious (particularly when they don't like what's being said), but reputation is still one of the best heuristics for rapid evaluation of information that we have. But then there's the issue whether the quoted authority actually said what's being quoted. Reputation is transitive, so you could technically chain it (a "web of trust" :)), but then again, looking at most regular people I know in real life, this doesn't work - it's hard to trust second-hand information even from a friend or family member, unless you know they're way above average in being pedantic about information provenance in their speech. Unfortunately, most people I know will say "X is Y", where the correct thing to say would be "I remember reading 2 years ago in Foo that they claimed Bar said X is Y". This makes reports from such people pretty much entirely noise, as it's impossible to evaluate provenance.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. I've seen that here on HN, too. Person 1 claims X. Person 2 asks for evidence. Person 1 posts a URL, as if it's evidence for X. But when you read the contents carefully, you realize that it doesn't actually provide any evidence for X. It provides evidence for something that's somewhere in the same general topic as X, but that's not what Person 2 asked for.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hn_check 6y ago
  Just as often person 1 says something, providing no citations (but living in a world where we know that anyone can support/debunk with their own searches). Person 2 comes along and posts a retort with a number of citations, properly linked in the footer of their post. HN upvotes person 2. Downvotes person 1 to the nether. Clearly they were debunked. Only person 2's citations were noise [1]. They were just marginally connected nonsense [2] to add gravity to whatever else they were claiming as a credibility multiplier. They were playing the crowd [3], knowing that extraordinarily few will ever bother reading anything, and just want to browse past and give passing judgments. This plays out on HN daily, and is spectacularly effective. ----CITATIONS----- [1] - https://processing.org/reference/noise_.html https://processing.org/reference/noise_.html [2] - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-trump-his-rallies-are-church-and-he-is-the-gospel https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-t... [3] - https://medium.com/skeptikai/the-real-story-behind-the-quote-theres-a-sucker-born-every-minute-1db9a7220d34 https://medium.com/skeptikai/the-real-story-behind-the-quote...
  - enchiridion 6y ago
    It's an appeal to authority that short circuits the fast nature of HN. Most people are just skimming and some will vote based citations. @dang what do you think of a rule against citation spam?
  - vkou 6y ago
tomayac 6y ago
The extension’s author here. Just wanted to let you know that—apart from Chrome—it’s also available for Edge, and a beta version based on a (still unfinished) polyfill for Firefox. The same code also works on Safari 14, we hope to release it there, too. Install links: https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/link-to-text-fragment#installation https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/link-to-text-fragment#in...
- brlewis 6y ago
  How is it different from this bookmarklet? https://twitter.com/austegard/status/1228150401427529728 https://twitter.com/austegard/status/1228150401427529728
  - bokan 6y ago
    The big difference is that the original intended text is encoded in the URL. An element-id fragment is better than just a URL but will often be less granular than the exact text being linked (e.g. a heading). If you're looking to link a citation to a statement, having the text is far more useful since the person following the link doesn't have to now find the statement in a potentially large and broad section. Also, if the page has since changed and the text no longer substantiates the cited claim, that'll be immediately apparent.
    - brlewis 6y ago
      The extension needs to be installed by both the creator and the receiver of the URL with the original intended text encoded into it?
      - bokan 6y ago
        The extension uses a new URL fragment addition that Chrome has shipped: https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment so these links will work on any Chrome/Chromium-based browser. (in non-Chromium browsers without the extension the link will load but the fragment wont be recognized) The hope is that this is useful and adopted by other browser engines and links like this would eventually be interoperable.
site-packages1 6y ago
I have a lawyer friend who complains about this in the legal field. A brief may cite a case for a specific proposition. They have to be pretty thorough because there is a nonzero chance that the cited case doesn't actually stand for the proposition, and in some cases says exactly the opposite!
kens 6y ago
> As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Yes, I've encountered that numerous times. One problem is the chain of strengthening citations; citation X supposedly proves Y, but it cites something less conclusive that cites something that has very weak evidence for Y. Then there's the self-citation: citation X shows Y, but citation X is by the same author and cites something else by the same author and there's nothing solid at the bottom of the chain. Then there's the authority-strengthening: a journal cites a less-rigorous journal which cites a book that cites a random person. The point is that a citation is only the starting point for evaluating a claim. (The other conclusion is that I wasted a lot of time in the library researching claims for stupid internet arguments.)
beervirus 6y ago
This is disturbingly common in the legal world too. A judicial opinion will cite some earlier case as supporting a proposition, but if you dig into it, you'll find that the earlier case is merely tangential. (Or totally unrelated, or even completely contrary.)
shishy 6y ago
Well, only because this is relevant to the bit about citations in academic papers: you may find what we're doing at scite interesting! https://scite.ai/ https://scite.ai/ You can see how papers are cited by others, see the context around the citation snippet, and whether others just mention, support, or dispute your findings. Feedback is always welcomed (drop me a line at ashish@scite.ai if you have any thoughts)
autokad 6y ago
also people shouldn't blindly be going to links on the internet posted by randos. It would be easy to post a script to write replies on comment threads linking to a malicious site. its nice to have urls, but I think we all know deep down they wont change much in the grand scheme of things. I know when I see a quote on the internet, its almost assuredly fake, but if I am interested I can always just google it.
modzu 6y ago
what field are you in? this is not my experience; citations follow a standard (chicago, ama, etc) for handling page numbers. there is of course citation in the sense of "i read these 3 books while studying a subject" so they go in even though you are not quoting them. weighted by readers accordingly
- btrettel 6y ago
  I work in fluid dynamics. Page numbers for an article are standard. Page numbers for a specific piece of information are not. E.g., it's common for someone to write [1] but not [1, p. 528]. In fact, I recently had a typesetter seem confused about my use of the latter style, thinking that the pages referred to the article I wrote rather than the cited article.
hinkley 6y ago
I can't find it but the appropriate XKCD has a character make an outrageous claim and then tells the skeptic to check Wikipedia... in five minutes.
13415 6y ago
As an Academic I find the whole discussion and usual Wikipedia style request for sources doubtful and sometimes even comical. Of course I understand that it's often a good thing to provide a source for a claim in online discussions, but it's neither always necessary nor is there always a burden of proof on the person who makes a claim. Especially online people often confuse arguments with explicative discourse, I certainly have made that mistake in the past. If somebody explains something to you, better listen. You should be skeptical of any claims, whether they are in books, newspapers, or online forums. It's not as if peer review or printing books somehow eradicates errors. I've seen logic books full of mistakes and sloppy reasoning. The most important thing for anyone is to keep a mindset that is aiming towards truth. If someone doesn't have that mindset, no amount of discussion will be fruitful. It will just go round and round in circles and get lost in an orgy of bogus sources. I could virtually prove anything to someone who believes anything that has been written, by selectively looking for the fitting sources. The lesson I've learned from Usenet: Don't argue with people online, but allow them to teach you.
marcusverus 6y ago
There is an additional trick that the media use which is generally referred to as 'the media sourcing itself'. To do so, article A will make a claim, and as evidence will cite article B. Upon inspection of Article B, you find that it is merely making the same claim. Frequently, article B will cite the supporting evidence, but not always. Here's an example: A top-level Ars Technica article claims "the US fossil fuel industry receiving huge subsidies, estimated at $649 billion in 2015 alone."[0] To support this claim, they don't link supporting evidence, but instead they link a Forbes article[1] which merely makes the same claim. Only by searching the Forbes article can you find a link to the actual supporting evidence [2], which, as it turns out, doesn't even support the original assertion. [0]https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/us-green-economys-growth-dwarfs-the-fossil-fuel-industrys/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/us-green-economys-gr... [1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united-states-spend-ten-times-more-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-than-education/#35dd7aa94473 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united... [2]https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Remain-Large-An-Update-Based-on-Country-Level-Estimates-46509 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Glo...
- streb-lo 6y ago
  I didn't read the linked IMF paper but the summary seems to directly support the claim: >The largest subsidizers in 2015 were China ($1.4 trillion), United States ($649 billion), Russia ($551 billion), European Union ($289 billion), and India ($209 billion).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - HillRat 6y ago
    I assume the parent poster takes issue with the definition of “subsidy” in the paper, which is probably better called “unpriced externalities” in the context. (It’s still IMO a subsidy, but it’s not what we intuitively think of as such, and thus the data point is rather misleading when quoted in the press.)
mishu2 6y ago
URI fragments would indeed be better, but you'd be relying on the page author to provide enough granularity. I like the concept of the Chrome extension, but would like to see it standardized since I don't use Chrome. For my website ( https://ontherecord.live/ https://ontherecord.live/ ) I'm relying on user feedback/manual moderation, which currently works but doesn't really scale. I think bit rot is an even bigger problem (either that or people maliciously quoting their own page/a Wikipedia article, which they can then change). I'm considering using the Wayback Machine ( https://web.archive.org/ https://web.archive.org/ ) to preserve a copy of the page being quoted, similar to what Wikipedia is doing, because unlike a published scientific article web pages can and do change over time.
ducaale 6y ago
A youtuber demonstrating how hard it is to verify a citation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjlKIjLWq-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjlKIjLWq-Y
tracker1 6y ago
Even in research papers... often the summary isn't supported by the paper, it's often over-stated, simplified or outright lying. Also, this is a huge part of why I don't like paywalls for research paid for by govt funding. It's really easy to get a summary, but actually getting to read the thing takes work, money or access that the general public doesn't have.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

arp242 6y ago

> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. I have similar experiences with Wikipedia; if I want to know about something I generally go to Wikipedia first and just loads a bunch of the references. They usually pan out, but not infrequently the reference simply doesn't contain whatever the Wikipedia article claimed.

TazeTSchnitzel 6y ago
One of the problems with Wikipedia is that the citation syntax does not require (it's possible but quite rare) specifying what part of the preceding text the citation relates to. As a result it often covers, deceptively, only part of the sentence it's attached to, or the paragraph it's attached to, and it can get worse with editing which doesn't account for the citation's content.

melvinroest 6y ago

This is exactly why I submitted [1] to HN, coincidentally a few hours ago. IMO, assertions should be computable (if possible) and backed by data. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23896279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23896279

tW4r 6y ago
I think this could be a great application for a DAG blockchain, with the axioms of a given scientific field as initial seed blocks. Then any proofs can be derived using the previous blocks, and, should any proof be disproved the whole sub chain depending on it would collapse and need to be rewritten “remined”
- smt88 6y ago
  As always, this solution doesn't benefit from a blockchain structure. You could do the same thing with an immutable, publicly readable database. The currently unsolvable problem is that there is often disagreement about axioms and proofs bring disproved. Even mathematical proofs can be very controversial. This is one of many problems that humans can't solve yet, which means it's hard/impossible to teach computers to do it.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    Axioms can also be mutually contradictory and this may not be obvious initially. Then you can prove and disprove everything at the same time.
    - smt88 6y ago
      If axioms are mutually contradictory, that doesn't actually prevent the concept of computing them and attaching them to logical chains. The core problem with computing them is that no machine can decide whether the axioms are contradictory in the first place. In most cases, even humans won't 100% agree.
  - Taek 6y ago
    Where does that immutability come from? If you have a centralized service controlling the flow of knowledge, this could have its own consequences. Maybe some sort of CRDT + gossip network? But at that point you are quite close to a blockchain. (Not that I'm confident such a thing is a good idea, but I do think that a decent portion of the blockchain stack makes sense given the idea)

monoclechris 6y ago

Often I see assertions that state the exact opposite of what the reference contains.

CM30 6y ago

I still remember one fake news site that took this to the extreme, in that it linked to a story that flat out didn't exist on the site it linked to. You clicked on the link, and you just ended up with a 404 error page. The fact that fooled anyone should probably give you a worrying insight into how many people are willing to trust/distrust links without even clicking on them. But yeah, either way, make sure the link actually goes somewhere, that it goes to a relevant page/article/video/whatever, and that said source does indeed say what the linking said says it does.

ballenf 6y ago
That's also a good reason for news orgs to have strict policies around never taking down articles or changing URLs. It happens enough to give cover to the behavior you cite. News sites could also replace their 404 page with an explanation "there used to be an article here, but we decided to remove it because ____" or "there's never been an article at this address".
- btrettel 6y ago
  There's a HTTP status code for pages which were deleted: 410 Gone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#4xx_Client_errors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#4xx_... This was famously used by Mark Pilgrim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pilgrim#%22Disappearance%22_from_the_Internet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pilgrim#%22Disappearance%...
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    Has anyone ever seen this in the wild? I didn’t even know it existed. Who knew there were so many different status codes.
    - btrettel 6y ago
      Seems that I edited my comment to add an example at the same time you posted yours.

clairity 6y ago

you should be able to make an argument without resting primarily and directly on other people's words, even if you largely rest on other people's ideas. whether it convinces any particular person is largely out of your control, and shouldn't consume the debate. citations don't change that calculus.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Citations can give data, though. If your ideas are based on more than just your own experience, you need external data.
- clairity 6y ago
  but then you run into the old saw about damn lies and statistics. the argument needs to stand on its own and be taken in good faith, otherwise discussion is futile. (edit: that's not to say provide no links, just that it won't make the argument, per my other comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899088, ironically, a citation.)
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    If your argument is based on some fact (e.g. some number being above some threshold), then you absolutely need to back up that number to make the argument resolve into "it's most likely true". If you don't back the number up, then the argument resolves only to "if the data is indeed as argued, then it's most likely true". Keeping beliefs with free variables in them is fine, IMO, as long as you're careful about not accidentally collapsing them into an outcome without having first checked the dependencies.
    - clairity 6y ago
      sure, i'd go one step further and note that there are no absolute certainties, so those free variables always exist, even implicitly. in that vein, most threshold numbers like that should at least come with uncertainty bounds (damn lies and statistics). said another way, outside of math and formal logic, real-world arguments resolve at best to "if the data is indeed as argued, then it's most likely true" (perhaps gödel is relevant here, as @marcinzm referenced downthread[1], another citation!). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23899111

c3534l 6y ago

I remember at a certain point I realized that the citations on cracked.com were often abused or flat out debunked the very thing the author claimed they did. I hadn't given up on the site yet, so I would post in the comments what the citations actually said. I'm still baffled by the generally negative reactions to doing so, but I do remember people saying things like "why should I trust you, some random dude in the comments, rather than a professional writer whose job it is to research these things?" Because it's a link to a website that anyone can read! But people will argue with you for 5 minutes rather than click on a link and read the surrounding few paragraphs to see that the writer took the source out of context.

cogman10 6y ago
Disinformation is pretty bad and hard to combat. The common game my family will play is "I've done my research and it's XYZ" When asked "Oh, what resources did you use to land on XYZ?" It's very frequently met with silence. The problem, as I see it, is that they'll read something on a facebook post which agrees with their existing biases. Over time they'll see the same thing reposted but with a slightly different twist and.. viola.. They've "researched" it. A good example of this is when anti-vaccination comes up. If you've done your research, you know that vaccines are safe[0], effective[1], don't cause autism[2] and pretty much a good thing for most everyone (excluding immunocompromised and the very VERY few people that react to vaccines). Yet, still, I'll run into family on facebook that have "done their research" on the matter and generally can only link back to some anti-vaxx blog post for evidence (if that, often nothing). What's worse, they'll completely dismiss any evidence to the contrary as being "shills", "biased", "payed off" or whatever other conspiracy theory they like. They've made the position their identity and refuting it makes them feel attacked. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html [1] https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/graph-us-measles-cases https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/graph-us... [2] https://vaccines.org.il/images/4/4e/Vaccines-are-not-associated-with-autism.pdf https://vaccines.org.il/images/4/4e/Vaccines-are-not-associa...

koheripbal 6y ago

What might be better would be some sort of reputation system. Something where I can see that other people that have looked into the person's citations confirm they actually say what they claim they say, on average (regardless of agreeing with their conclusions). Reputation is everything, and it's so incredibly scarce today. We could have different dimensions of Reputation (citation validity, logical argument validity, unsupported claim predictiveness, etc...)

dqpb 6y ago
Do you think reputation can be manipulated?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  It's funny how we circle back to reputation - or, in other words, authority. People like to point out "appeals to authority" as fallacious (particularly when they don't like what's being said), but reputation is still one of the best heuristics for rapid evaluation of information that we have. But then there's the issue whether the quoted authority actually said what's being quoted. Reputation is transitive, so you could technically chain it (a "web of trust" :)), but then again, looking at most regular people I know in real life, this doesn't work - it's hard to trust second-hand information even from a friend or family member, unless you know they're way above average in being pedantic about information provenance in their speech. Unfortunately, most people I know will say "X is Y", where the correct thing to say would be "I remember reading 2 years ago in Foo that they claimed Bar said X is Y". This makes reports from such people pretty much entirely noise, as it's impossible to evaluate provenance.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

> Time and time again I've found cited sources that don't say what was claimed. I've seen that here on HN, too. Person 1 claims X. Person 2 asks for evidence. Person 1 posts a URL, as if it's evidence for X. But when you read the contents carefully, you realize that it doesn't actually provide any evidence for X. It provides evidence for something that's somewhere in the same general topic as X, but that's not what Person 2 asked for.

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hn_check 6y ago
Just as often person 1 says something, providing no citations (but living in a world where we know that anyone can support/debunk with their own searches). Person 2 comes along and posts a retort with a number of citations, properly linked in the footer of their post. HN upvotes person 2. Downvotes person 1 to the nether. Clearly they were debunked. Only person 2's citations were noise [1]. They were just marginally connected nonsense [2] to add gravity to whatever else they were claiming as a credibility multiplier. They were playing the crowd [3], knowing that extraordinarily few will ever bother reading anything, and just want to browse past and give passing judgments. This plays out on HN daily, and is spectacularly effective. ----CITATIONS----- [1] - https://processing.org/reference/noise_.html https://processing.org/reference/noise_.html [2] - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-trump-his-rallies-are-church-and-he-is-the-gospel https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-t... [3] - https://medium.com/skeptikai/the-real-story-behind-the-quote-theres-a-sucker-born-every-minute-1db9a7220d34 https://medium.com/skeptikai/the-real-story-behind-the-quote...
- enchiridion 6y ago
  It's an appeal to authority that short circuits the fast nature of HN. Most people are just skimming and some will vote based citations. @dang what do you think of a rule against citation spam?
- vkou 6y ago

tomayac 6y ago

The extension’s author here. Just wanted to let you know that—apart from Chrome—it’s also available for Edge, and a beta version based on a (still unfinished) polyfill for Firefox. The same code also works on Safari 14, we hope to release it there, too. Install links: https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/link-to-text-fragment#installation https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/link-to-text-fragment#in...

brlewis 6y ago
How is it different from this bookmarklet? https://twitter.com/austegard/status/1228150401427529728 https://twitter.com/austegard/status/1228150401427529728
- bokan 6y ago
  The big difference is that the original intended text is encoded in the URL. An element-id fragment is better than just a URL but will often be less granular than the exact text being linked (e.g. a heading). If you're looking to link a citation to a statement, having the text is far more useful since the person following the link doesn't have to now find the statement in a potentially large and broad section. Also, if the page has since changed and the text no longer substantiates the cited claim, that'll be immediately apparent.
  - brlewis 6y ago
    The extension needs to be installed by both the creator and the receiver of the URL with the original intended text encoded into it?
    - bokan 6y ago
      The extension uses a new URL fragment addition that Chrome has shipped: https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment https://github.com/WICG/scroll-to-text-fragment so these links will work on any Chrome/Chromium-based browser. (in non-Chromium browsers without the extension the link will load but the fragment wont be recognized) The hope is that this is useful and adopted by other browser engines and links like this would eventually be interoperable.

site-packages1 6y ago

I have a lawyer friend who complains about this in the legal field. A brief may cite a case for a specific proposition. They have to be pretty thorough because there is a nonzero chance that the cited case doesn't actually stand for the proposition, and in some cases says exactly the opposite!

kens 6y ago

> As many of those who have read academic papers know, even claims with citations are often suspicious. Yes, I've encountered that numerous times. One problem is the chain of strengthening citations; citation X supposedly proves Y, but it cites something less conclusive that cites something that has very weak evidence for Y. Then there's the self-citation: citation X shows Y, but citation X is by the same author and cites something else by the same author and there's nothing solid at the bottom of the chain. Then there's the authority-strengthening: a journal cites a less-rigorous journal which cites a book that cites a random person. The point is that a citation is only the starting point for evaluating a claim. (The other conclusion is that I wasted a lot of time in the library researching claims for stupid internet arguments.)

beervirus 6y ago

This is disturbingly common in the legal world too. A judicial opinion will cite some earlier case as supporting a proposition, but if you dig into it, you'll find that the earlier case is merely tangential. (Or totally unrelated, or even completely contrary.)

shishy 6y ago

Well, only because this is relevant to the bit about citations in academic papers: you may find what we're doing at scite interesting! https://scite.ai/ https://scite.ai/ You can see how papers are cited by others, see the context around the citation snippet, and whether others just mention, support, or dispute your findings. Feedback is always welcomed (drop me a line at ashish@scite.ai if you have any thoughts)

autokad 6y ago

also people shouldn't blindly be going to links on the internet posted by randos. It would be easy to post a script to write replies on comment threads linking to a malicious site. its nice to have urls, but I think we all know deep down they wont change much in the grand scheme of things. I know when I see a quote on the internet, its almost assuredly fake, but if I am interested I can always just google it.

modzu 6y ago

what field are you in? this is not my experience; citations follow a standard (chicago, ama, etc) for handling page numbers. there is of course citation in the sense of "i read these 3 books while studying a subject" so they go in even though you are not quoting them. weighted by readers accordingly

btrettel 6y ago
I work in fluid dynamics. Page numbers for an article are standard. Page numbers for a specific piece of information are not. E.g., it's common for someone to write [1] but not [1, p. 528]. In fact, I recently had a typesetter seem confused about my use of the latter style, thinking that the pages referred to the article I wrote rather than the cited article.

hinkley 6y ago

I can't find it but the appropriate XKCD has a character make an outrageous claim and then tells the skeptic to check Wikipedia... in five minutes.

13415 6y ago

As an Academic I find the whole discussion and usual Wikipedia style request for sources doubtful and sometimes even comical. Of course I understand that it's often a good thing to provide a source for a claim in online discussions, but it's neither always necessary nor is there always a burden of proof on the person who makes a claim. Especially online people often confuse arguments with explicative discourse, I certainly have made that mistake in the past. If somebody explains something to you, better listen. You should be skeptical of any claims, whether they are in books, newspapers, or online forums. It's not as if peer review or printing books somehow eradicates errors. I've seen logic books full of mistakes and sloppy reasoning. The most important thing for anyone is to keep a mindset that is aiming towards truth. If someone doesn't have that mindset, no amount of discussion will be fruitful. It will just go round and round in circles and get lost in an orgy of bogus sources. I could virtually prove anything to someone who believes anything that has been written, by selectively looking for the fitting sources. The lesson I've learned from Usenet: Don't argue with people online, but allow them to teach you.

marcusverus 6y ago

There is an additional trick that the media use which is generally referred to as 'the media sourcing itself'. To do so, article A will make a claim, and as evidence will cite article B. Upon inspection of Article B, you find that it is merely making the same claim. Frequently, article B will cite the supporting evidence, but not always. Here's an example: A top-level Ars Technica article claims "the US fossil fuel industry receiving huge subsidies, estimated at $649 billion in 2015 alone."[0] To support this claim, they don't link supporting evidence, but instead they link a Forbes article[1] which merely makes the same claim. Only by searching the Forbes article can you find a link to the actual supporting evidence [2], which, as it turns out, doesn't even support the original assertion. [0]https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/us-green-economys-growth-dwarfs-the-fossil-fuel-industrys/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/us-green-economys-gr... [1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united-states-spend-ten-times-more-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-than-education/#35dd7aa94473 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united... [2]https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Remain-Large-An-Update-Based-on-Country-Level-Estimates-46509 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Glo...

streb-lo 6y ago
I didn't read the linked IMF paper but the summary seems to directly support the claim: >The largest subsidizers in 2015 were China ($1.4 trillion), United States ($649 billion), Russia ($551 billion), European Union ($289 billion), and India ($209 billion).
- deleted 6y ago
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- HillRat 6y ago
  I assume the parent poster takes issue with the definition of “subsidy” in the paper, which is probably better called “unpriced externalities” in the context. (It’s still IMO a subsidy, but it’s not what we intuitively think of as such, and thus the data point is rather misleading when quoted in the press.)

mishu2 6y ago

URI fragments would indeed be better, but you'd be relying on the page author to provide enough granularity. I like the concept of the Chrome extension, but would like to see it standardized since I don't use Chrome. For my website ( https://ontherecord.live/ https://ontherecord.live/ ) I'm relying on user feedback/manual moderation, which currently works but doesn't really scale. I think bit rot is an even bigger problem (either that or people maliciously quoting their own page/a Wikipedia article, which they can then change). I'm considering using the Wayback Machine ( https://web.archive.org/ https://web.archive.org/ ) to preserve a copy of the page being quoted, similar to what Wikipedia is doing, because unlike a published scientific article web pages can and do change over time.

ducaale 6y ago

A youtuber demonstrating how hard it is to verify a citation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjlKIjLWq-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjlKIjLWq-Y

tracker1 6y ago

Even in research papers... often the summary isn't supported by the paper, it's often over-stated, simplified or outright lying. Also, this is a huge part of why I don't like paywalls for research paid for by govt funding. It's really easy to get a summary, but actually getting to read the thing takes work, money or access that the general public doesn't have.

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