Disinformation is nothing new. It’s been used by journalists, salespeople and politicians forever.
What has changed recently is how data is being presented.
I think most people who know me would say I naturally critical disposition. I have the benefit of having attended reputable education facilities (whether I made use of them is another matter). I will take a moment to define the term disinformation. Disinformation is knowingly using false information to deliberately mislead and influence public opinion. Its often confused with misinformation, false information that is spread due to ignorance without the intent to deceive.
For many years graphing and modelling were my greatest tool (as a consultant) to communicate complex issues, help executives and board members understand technically complex issues so they could make timely and sensible decisions. Today I see a great deal more professionally composed disinformation than ever before, especially from social causes featured in mainstream media and online.
Disinformation is typically composed by smart people who have been told they need to find a problem somewhere in order to get their paycheck. If you want to sell something you need to find a problem before presenting the solution. The general public has not become more gullible than it used to be. Perhaps people’s attention spans are shorter than they once were. But that’s not the real cause of the uptake in disinformation or fake news. It’s who is selling the bullshit, or more specifically, who they are pretending to be. Anyone who has been through the university system in the past decade will understand they are run more like businesses. Governments were keen to offload the growing expense that education presented (in Australia around 5-10% of GE) and shift Universities and some Secondary Schools to income generators. Today, in Australia the education sector from International Students alone is worth around $40 Billion AUD per annum.
As a student or academic, if you want to further your accreditation (almost mandatory for some areas) you may need to perform a thesis or doctorate, perhaps publish one of your academic papers. This is not without expense, and even if you’re not getting paid someone will need to sponsor the work, at the very least access to research equipment and facilities.
Importantly, if you are seeking a grant to fund your research, or you are seeking a role in an organisation that conducts research you will need to align your work with that organisations strategic objectives. Who is funding the research today is clandestine, it used to be corporations or wealthy individuals wanting to push a particular agenda, but today it is less clear. We have think tanks and strategic policy institutes and alike. They can go to some trouble with their corporate structures to distance themselves from the money people. It can take some time and resources to ‘follow the money’ and those that were typically charged with the task, journalists, are struggling for jobs in an ever shrinking pool of relevance in the face of independent news sources. Its not that these organisations are not under scrutiny, they are, but their pockets are deep, and they have more power today as the media organisations get more desperate for sponsorship and advertising dollars.
The other factor is the transition of ‘humanities’ to occupy the same revered space as the branches of mainstream science. Many formally prestigious universities, under a push for greater diversity, equity and inclusion were forced to appoint humanities academics (social studies) to senior positions. Shortly thereafter the graduates of courses that used to be described as merely ‘social studies’ started to emerge with a Degrees or Doctor of Science.
Up until only recently anyone calling themselves a Scientist needed to undertake years of rigorous study inside one of the established branches of science along with rigorous peer scrutiny. Today many universities are producing scientists with little or no scrutiny even from their own branches of knowledge in culture, human values or spirit. The boundaries between humanities and established science are becoming very blurred. I would suggest anyone taking advice from someone purporting to be a scientist, check their academic credentials. It’s doesn’t mean what it used to.
The tools of the trade.
Data modelling, can refer to the organisation of data objects and relationships found in a particular selection of related data such as customers, products, batches and shipping orders. Or what I want to cover here, when it’s used in a more abstract way referencing various data entities, attributes or tables that might not otherwise have direct relevance. These models are then used to produce deliberately misleading graphs designed to trick the viewer into seeing an issue or opportunity more inline with the authors narrative. Other less sophisticated techniques to manipulate graphs include misrepresenting scale, omitting numbers, or failing to include a baseline or zero.
These techniques are used heavily by social justice causes such as DEI, BLM and Climate Alarmism. None of these causes seem to be formally scrutinized. Anyone questioning social justice issues is typically attacked rather than debated. This is why people like JK Rowling are so fervently attacked by Trans Activists. As far as I can see she merely asserted that biology states that a female has XX chromosomes and a male is XY (excluding Klinefelter syndrome). This is scientific reality, no matter how painful to some people. It does not however go on to say that people cannot have their own individual identities.
Some reference points: