How to Spot Incorrect Information Online

The early hours of any major disaster, including pandemics, are often void of accurate reporting. Frustratingly for journalists and government officials, hearing, “We don’t know yet,” seldom provides comfort, even if it’s correct. And when there’s no information available, people tend to jump to conclusions.

Robert Evans from the investigative journalist group Bellingcat has characterized four types of misinformation: Generic, from credible sources, from sources pretending to be credible, and grifting — or when the person making a claim suddenly pivots to selling a product. Knowing how to identify each kind takes practice, but anyone can do it.

The first step in determining if information is true is to check the verifiability and reliability of its source. Pictures can also be reverse-image searched online, which is useful in cases where videos and images on social media depict events which are supposedly recent but can sometimes be very old or pulled out of context.

Other pieces of misinformation can come from people who aren’t medical professionals but have social influence. Take the President of Belarus, who suggested that citizens drink vodka and go to saunas to keep COVID at bay, for example. You will almost never see the people making these types of claims providing evidence beyond their own conjecture.

Sometimes misinformation is mistakenly distributed by credible sources. For example, if an article claims that two people are under threat of litigation by a medical device company, but the company supposedly seeking to sue is not named, it’s most likely false. This was the case for a now-corrected article from The Verge.

Had the name of the company been provided, it would have been simple enough for someone to see if they had anything to say about it on their website. If an article is not verifiable in this way, it can not be trusted.

When it comes to conspiracy theories, however, we get into more dodgy territory. Conspiracy theories are nearly impossible to debunk because they’re often based in radical mistrust of any authorities. One such theory is that a Harvard professor was supposedly involved in “creating” COVID-19. This is a lie with a sliver of truth in it, a common device used to spread misinformation or disinformation. In this case, the professor had been arrested during the pandemic but had no connection to the virus.

Some more bizarre conspiracy theories, like the idea of COVID being a military bio-weapon, has been thrown around by various governments, with Chinese and American officials pointing at each other.

In your own browsing on social media, look for verifiable facts and sources. False claims are seldom backed up with a link to a solid news source and often lack crucial information. If it takes you more than five minutes to track down an original online source, it’s probably misinformation or disinformation. You can also check Snopes, which provides more rigorous verification of oddball claims.

For the sake of the people you care about, please, listen to doctors, scientists, infectious disease experts, and medical professionals who are exposing themselves to a deadly disease as we speak.