Skepticism Online
Recently I received the following e-mail from a friend:
NEW YORK – Idaho resident Kathy Evans brought humiliation to her friends and family Tuesday when she set a new standard for stupidity with her appearance on the popular TV show, “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.”
It seems that Evans, a 32-year-old wife and mother of two, got stuck on the first question, and proceeded to make what fans of the show are dubbing “the absolute worst use of lifelines ever.”
After being introduced to the show’s host Meredith Vieira, Evans assured her that she was ready to play, whereupon she was posed with an extremely easy $100 question. The question was:
“Which of the following is the largest?”
A) A Peanut
B) An Elephant
C) The Moon
D) Hey, who you calling large?Immediately Mrs. Evans was struck with an all consuming panic as she realized that this was a question to which she did not readily know the answer.
“Hmm, oh boy, that’s a toughie,” said Evans, as Vieira did her level best to hide her disbelief and disgust. “I mean, I’m sure I’ve heard of some of these things before, but I have no idea how large they would be.”
Evans made the decision to use the first of her three lifelines, the 50/50. Answers A and D were removed, leaving her to decide which was bigger, an elephant or the moon. However, faced with an incredibly easy question, Evans still remained unsure.
“Oh! It removed the two I was leaning towards!” exclaimed Evans. “Darn. I think I better phone a friend.”
Using the second of her two lifelines on the first question, Mrs. Evans asked to be connected with her friend Betsy, who is an office assistant.
“Hi Betsy! How are you? This is Kathy! I’m on TV!” said Evans, wasting the first seven seconds of her call. “Ok, I got an important question. Which of the following is the largest? B, an elephant, or C, the moon. 15 seconds hun.”
Betsy quickly replied that the answer was C, the moon. Evans proceeded to argue with her friend for the remaining ten seconds.
“Come on Betsy, are you sure?” said Evans. “How sure are you? Puh, that can’t be it.”
To everyone’s astonishment, the moronic Evans declined to take her friend’s advice and pick ‘The Moon.’
“I just don’t know if I can trust Betsy. She’s not all that bright. So I think I’d like to ask the audience,” said Evans.
Asked to vote on the correct answer, the audience returned 98% in favor of answer C, ‘The Moon.’ Having used up all her lifelines, Evans then made the dumbest choice of her life.
“Wow, seems like everybody is against what I’m thinking,” said the too-stupid-to-live Evans. “But you know, sometimes you just got to go with your gut. So, let’s see. For which is larger, an elephant or the moon, I’m going to have to go with B, an elephant. Final answer.” Evans sat before the dumbfounded audience, the only one waiting with bated breath, and was told that she was wrong, and that the answer was in fact, C, ‘The Moon.’
Variations of this e-mail have cropped up on numerous websites and have circulated in many e-mail versions. Of course everyone loves the freakshow of someone else’s extreme stupidity. That likely explains why this particular story went viral. It’s a funny story, but couldn’t buy it. So I did what I always do when I receive such e-mails – spent a few minutes with Google.
It turns out, as is almost always the case with such viral e-mails, the story is fiction. I searched on Kathy Evans and came up with numerous websites (the usual sites, like hoax-slayer and snopes) that revealed that the e-mail is a hoax. The story itself is not really a hoax – it is satire meant purely for humor and originally written for BSNews.org (the name says it all). The story was lifted from BSNews, altered a bit, and then distrubuted as real.
If you’re like me you get these e-mail urban legends once a week or so. I’ve made it a habit to check them out . On average it takes about one minute to uncover the real story. Sometimes the stories support a particular political view, at others they promise easy money or other achievment. Like urban legends in general, many play upon common fears, while others are the modern verson of the carnival freak show.
The internet has brought us a new age of information – and misinformation. Rumors spread much more quickly and anonymously to many more people. In response the public needs to develop new skills, to become internet savvy – internet skeptical.
In the final analysis it may be a good thing. Most internet hoaxes, like this one, are benign. They provide a good opportunity to demonstrate the need to question what you are told, independently verify information, and how to use the internet to do that. Also the turnaround time is quick, and the debunking often definitive. No one wants to credulously send out a hoax e-mail to everyone they know, only to moments later be shown to have been duped. This provides good incentive to be skeptical.
Of course there are intenet scams that are not benign. Phishing schemes use fraudulent e-mail to steal the identity of their victims – don’t click that link. Being internet skeptical can save you from much more than just a brief embarassment, it can literally save your life’s fortune. Being savvy about health scams can save your life.
When the Soviet Union fell and the citizens were exposed for the first time in several generations to somewhat open capitalism and the freedom of belief it became a haven for con-artists. Superstitious beliefs exploded. It took time for the public to learn how to protect themselves from deceptive advertising, or a convincing con. Of course this is an ongoing process, there, here, and everywhere, but the learning curve was steep after the fall.
Now we are in the middle of another steep learning curve brought upon by the internet. The lesson is clear – stay skeptical.
There is a downside to hoaxing. When people can’t believe what they read or see, it doesn’t always make them evaluate ideas carefully. Quite the reverse: most people, even most skeptics, can’t spend the time or mental effort to research and evaluate every fact or concept they see. Instead, they find one or two sources of authority, and rely on them to do the evaluating.
I like a good hoax as much as anyone, but a world in which there is no certainty is one crying out for a tyrant.
Great post Steve – I have to admit, I thought that you were going to use it as an analogy for the Intelligent Design proponents’ justification for belief.
Cambias – to be clear, I was not justifying or recommending hoaxing, just pointing a possible positive unintended consequence.
I agree with your assessment of the negative side of hoaxing, but what is your point, exactly. We will always have hoaxing, scams, and fraud which means that people will always have to be on guard to some degree. I agree that some people will just shift to an authority, but that is preferred if the authority is reliable.
My point is that people should engage their skepticism before believing and forwarding internet urban legends. Often less than a minute with Google is sufficient to determine it’s a hoax. One of the tools of internet skepticism is finding reliable sources of information that can quickly be consulted.
C’mon, dammit. Don’t leave us hanging! What’s the answer? Elephant or moon??!??
To Devil’s Advocate:
The correct answer, of course, is dependent on your relative distance from said elephant or moon. Anyone who has ever crushed a distant building between your close thumb & forefinger can tell you that.
And, as we all know, perception IS reality.
I rarely even bother to Google urban legends; I just go straight to Snopes.com.
It’s always the same people who send the same mails too. I must admit, when these friends of mine pass me an email written in coloured 30 point bold, I’m nearly writing my reply to them even before I have reached for the Snopes link. A stark example, if one were needed, of the lack of critical thinking in society.
The most memorable one I have sent recently was a picture of a man who had half his face ripped off, ostensibly by a power drill that he was using to pick his nose… In reality the photo was of a soldier who had been shot in the face.
@ Dr. N.:”One of the tools of internet skepticism is finding reliable sources of information that can quickly be consulted.”
This seems to be a problem for the people that forward such nonsense. They don’t seem to have a good ear for BS when they encounter it, and appear not to have the ability to sort out the wheat from the chaff. I repeatedly tell people that forward this kind of thing to me to please do a little research ( and even suggest sources) before hitting that forward button, but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good.
I suspect they are skeptical that I am any better than they are at recognizing a hoax, which is fair, but from my perspective, they are easy targets. They seem particularly vulnerable to the ‘just so stories’ that have that sappy sentiment running through them that usually is a red flag. Also the blazing headline ” Please tell everyone you know etc etc !!!!!!! Gag!.
Ending my rant now.
Well, it wasn’t specified which elephant or which moon. What if it meant one of the Discworld elephants? What if it meant the sort of moon you might see in the window of a passing car full of drunken fraternity pledges? Specificity! Specificity! Ms. Evans has been victimized.
I have a co-worker who’s a young-earth creationist, Bible literalist and extremely conservative voter. He’s constantly sending these type of easily-debunked urban legend forwards, especially those that promote his view of religious faith and family values.
I started by replying only to him and including information that debunked the story in his forward, and mildly suggesting that he do some fact-checking before blindly forwarding these things. Never got a reply from him, and the forwards continued.
So then I started replying to all, so that everyone that he sent these things to saw the debunking info, hoping to get him to think a bit more critically (or, at the least, share a bit of skepticism with the rest of the folks on his distribution list).
The forwards stopped. Just as I started congratulating myself for changing his behavior, though, I found that he was still sending them. He’d just dropped me from his distribution list.
Typical for a young-earther, though, isn’t it?
“Excuse me, but here’s some evidence that disproves your story.”
“LA LA LA LA LA LA LA…I’m sorry, I can’t hear you…LA LA LA…”
Googling news stories can also quickly lead to their debunking.
For example, googling this story:
http://cbs13.com/local/Paraplegic.Man.Suffers.2.958151.html
led to this debunking:
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/090324-bad-spider-bite.html
I thought it sounded like “The Onion”. I guess I’ll check out BSNews to see what else they’ve got.
wow it sounds like a really big argument for nothing more than a nervous contestant. Many people believe that if they were in the same situation that it would have turned out different, but I’m sure most people would freeze up. For me i would probably be scared out of my mind. Forget the million dollars, how about the millions of people watching. :)
New York Psychic
jesseb, you could put a gun to someone’s head and they’d still answer correctly.
There’s a screening process for this TV show in Australia. I had an art director who was invited to do a test sitting. He was waffling around the studio all high and mighty about the fact he was going to sit a test. Then he failed the test. The rest was blissful revenge.
I thought the story was worth a chuckle, at least. It sounded unbelievable, and as it turns out, it was!
Anyone using the internet should have SNOPES bookmarked for quick reference. It’s one of the most useful sites on the web when it comes to protecting yourself.
Sheesh, I end up on site where everybody is Mensa member or exceedingly bright. Who wants to be a millionaire? Is this trick question? Think that was same question my stockbroker asked when I came in with billion dollars. One day mentioned in Forbes magazine, now I mingle with hoi polloi. Free market economy …mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Dr. N, who is the “friend” who forwarded this email to you? Is he or she completely unaware of your penchant for skepticism?
I have my friends and family thoroughly trained not to bother forwarding me such things (and if they do, they get some e-debunking right back).
BillDarryl:”I have my friends and family thoroughly trained not to bother forwarding me such things (and if they do, they get some e-debunking right back).”
The rest of us should be so lucky. (see #8)
Thats great, thanks for the funniest thing today. But isn´t that story a pretty poor example of the subject of the post? I mean it´s sooo obviously fake.
On the other hand, I´m pretty sure Jenny McCarthy *is* real. In fact, she and the woman in the story would probably get along fine.
I find the “if it was fwrd to me it must be true” syndrome to be one of the most egregious crimes of stupidity.
Though I use a gentile hand most often, I do use the Reply all button to point out the many errors. I will even us all the e-mails on the list for those who do not bother to clean up the e-mail. This surprisingly has resulted in my server asking me to stop spamming!
After a while most don’t even bother to send me such tripe.