Of all the disgusting, infuriating, perplexing and dangerous things that Donald Trump has done since he became a political powerhouse, probably none is as dangerous as the destruction of confidence in the mainstream media. If the President can tell the most preposterous lies and get away with it, then it becomes impossible to rely on the truth of any statement by any public figure. The ability to say “fake news” has made it possible for anybody to deny the reality of anything. It also allows one to propose any kind of alternate reality with no requirement to actually justify any statement, no matter how bizarre and absurd it may be. Facts don’t matter much anymore to a lot of people. The dangerous thing about that is that decisions made with no facts are unlikely to be wise ones.

My recent exchange of comments with a certain reader highlights some of these issues. My correspondence with this gentleman has been cordial and respectful, and I hope that I can maintain that position. But some of his statements are so illustrative of the problems with the lack of appropriate information sourcing that I simply couldn’t ignore them.

One of that recent reader’s statements was “It is a proven fact that the vaccine doesn’t work and some research is indicating that it may be increasing more serious infections.” The first thing to notice is that this statement doesn’t define what he means when he says the vaccine doesn’t work. My understanding is that vaccine immunity decreases in time. My understanding is that the vaccine doesn’t prevent you from passing the virus along to other people. So, if you specify that the vaccine is deemed to work only if it provides sustained immunity and/or prevents you from passing along the virus, then I agree, it doesn’t work. But if you define working as significantly reducing both probability of infection and severity of impact of the virus, then the reader is wrong, because the vaccine works.

How can I say that with such assurance? The answer is that in a matter of minutes I was able to discover a number of scientific articles in peer reviewed journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the British journal The Lancet, and the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), and those articles provide real answers to what the vaccines do, and what they do not do. If you track the nature of these articles, you’ll see that they continue to study the vaccine through its several mutations, providing technical answers to what the change in variant has done to the effectiveness of the vaccine.

I’m not going to get into the details what the various studies found, and how things have changed as the virus has mutated. I merely want to identify that the best answers to questions about vaccine effectiveness are found in peer reviewed journals. They result from serious scientific endeavour. They reflect not just the interpretation of their author, but also the considered opinion of a panel of experts in the field who review the structure of the experiments, and the integrity of the data and pass judgement on whether the article deserves publication.

If you hear someone say “it’s a proven fact that (name your hypothesis)”, you would be well advised to question what scientific studies and articles have proven that fact. So, for example, I challenge him to identify the serious, scientific, peer reviewed articles that have shown that vaccines “may be increasing more serious infections.”

Are peer reviewed articles perfect? No, every now and then someone will come up with a follow-up study or data set that casts doubt on the conclusions of the first study. Maybe there was a hidden flaw in the experiment controls. Maybe the initial data set was small in size and the collection of a greater volume of data didn’t support the early research indications. But it doesn’t matter. Peer reviewed scientific opinions are still far and away the best and most solid basis for reaching conclusions about any technical matter.

Do people dispute the validity of peer reviewed science? Yes, of course they do. This is the age of Trump, where you can deny anything. But let me tell you this – that kind of denial gets you into tin hat conspiracy theory company, and I will not argue or debate with anyone who chooses that route. There’s no point. If you believe that any and all scientific articles can be disputed if you don’t like their conclusions, then there’s no point in me arguing with you.

My correspondent also revealed his disdain for main stream media. “There is no point in me trying to change your mind as you obviously just take the MSM garbage as gospel… If you do some research not from the MSM or so-called government experts you should find the other side of the story.” It is true that I believe much of what I read or see on mainstream media. But mine is not a blind belief.

I think thirty years or forty years ago, if something made the news, you could take it to the bank. Back then journalistic standards were rigorous. Editors and publishers demanded facts and held themselves and their writers to an exacting standard. In those good ol’ days, it was necessary to get a statement past a critical editor and publisher in a competitive news business where the competition was going to crucify you if you published something that contained factual errors. That’s not true anymore. Any crack-pot with access to the internet can self-publish their own views with no real controls over the accuracy of the information being used. (Yes, that means me and my blog page too!)

What the advent of the internet has done is to create an absolutely incredible growth in the amount of information available to the average citizen. As far back as 2013, a science magazine called Science Daily wrote “A full 90% of all the data in the world has been generated over the last two years. The internet companies are awash with data that can be grouped and utilised.” If you want information on any subject you just have to say “hey, Siri” (or Alexa, or Google), and you can find a ton of information. However, as described above, the lack of rigorous standards in publishing on the internet means that much of that information is of pretty dubious origin. So, then, it’s now necessary to make some sort of informed judgements about the news sources you use and believe and quote.

I use a web-site called mediabiasfactcheck.com to check my information sources. They grade news sources on their consistency in reporting facts, and on the evidence of bias in conclusions that the articles might reach. For example, CNN is rated strongly left leaning, with “mixed” factual reporting (the third lowest grade of seven possible). Similarly, Fox News is rated “strongly Right-Biased” with reporting that is “mixed factually and borderline Questionable based on poor sourcing and the spreading of conspiracy theories.”

The National Enquirer is rated “Questionable based on the routine publishing of sensational or fake news stories.”

Breitbart News, the home of former Trump advisor Steve Bannon is rated “Questionable based on extreme right-wing bias, the publication of conspiracy theories and propaganda, as well as numerous false claims.”

What those rankings tell me is that the web-site has a process that categorizes news sources accurately, or at least places them in pigeon-holes that seem consistent with my reading of those sites. If this web-site identifies these as questionable sources, what does their analysis tell them about some mainstream media sources?

CBC News is rated “Left-Center Biased based on editorial positions that lean slightly left and High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record.”

CTV News is “Least Biased based on balanced story selection and minimal use of emotional language. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing and a clean fact check record.”

The BBC is rated “Left-Center biased based on story selection that slightly favors the left. We also rate them High for factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information”.

Once again, those ratings seem consistent with my experiences of those sources. And therefore, we can have a significant level of trust in the rating of unfamiliar sources we may want to check out. And I use those ratings to guide my understanding of what I read or see on TV. I take everything I see on CNN with a grain of salt. I never watch Fox News because their slavish worship of Donald Trump condemns them absolutely in my mind. I believe that CBC News does have a little left leaning bias, so I know I can trust their facts, but be a little cautious of their conclusions.

I subscribe to The Economist magazine, a news source from outside Canada. I read it and trust it because it allows me to see Canadian affairs with an outsider’s perspective, and because it has a terrific rating by MediaBiasFactCheck. They rate The Economist as “Least Biased based on balanced reporting and High for factual reporting due to a clean fact check record.”

So, to the proposition that I swallow the MSM garbage – yes, I trust mainstream news sources more than I trust news sources with a serious demonstrable bias to the left or the right and much, much more than I trust news sources with a history of fact check failures.

My point isn’t that Mainstream media is right, although I think by and large that is true. My point is that you should choose your news source with eyes wide open. You should know their fact checking history and the bias that they’ve demonstrated. And if you read something interesting from an unfamiliar information source, you owe it to yourself to research the source of that information before you accept it. You should promise yourself that you will never forward a news report on social media without first checking out the source with a reputable agency such as MediaBiasFactCheck or one of its competitors. Social Media is a cess-pool of garbage news, and we all have a responsibility not to add to that mess.

In addition to rejecting news from Main Stream Media (MSM) the reader also rejects “So called government experts”.  He related a story which demonstrated his desire to “find the other side of the story”. He wrote “I watched a 2 hour program on Friday night which the freedom group had arranged to present their facts to the government re the vax mandates. Dr. Tam and two others were invited to discuss the scientific research that 3 Doctors had to present but of course Dr Tam and crew didn’t show. The presentation by the 3 Doctors was very informative and convincing and supported previous research stating the vaccines were not effective.”

I did not see the program to which he referred, and so I cannot really comment on it. But relying on experts is very similar to relying on media sources. You need to pick your expert carefully. It is very easy to find news stories about doctors who claim that Covid-19 is a hoax or that vaccines don’t work. Dr. Roger Hodkinson made the news when he told Edmonton City Council that they should eliminate restrictions because Covid is “just another bad flu”. Dr. Ryan Cole reported that “COVID-19 vaccines weaken the immune system; “ 20 times increase’ of cancer in vaccinated patients”. So, you can find doctors, “experts”, who disagree with the government-endorsed experts. But the problem is that most of those people aren’t very credible. Both of the gentlemen referenced above are pathologists, with no expertise in epidemiology or immunology. The Associated Press reviewed the Hodkinson claim and reported “False. Not only is COVID-19 deadlier than the flu, but symptoms can be long-lasting, according to medical experts. Some online posts referred to Hodkinson as a former chairman of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Hodkinson has never been chairman of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.Health Feedback (a web-site highly rated for scientific accuracy by MediaBiasfactCheck), evaluated Dr. Cole’s assertion and reported “No data is provided to support the claim that there has been a 20 times increase of cancer in vaccinated patients. There is also no evidence supporting the claim that COVID-19 vaccines weaken the immune system.”

Yes, I listen carefully to the advice and guidance provided by so-called government experts, and with good reason. First of all, those people didn’t get to where they are by accident. Selection to the post of Chief Medical officer of Health for Ontario, or British Columbia or for Canada implies that the person went through some sort of serious evaluation and screening process. Selection to the Ontario Science Table similarly implies an acceptance of skill and knowledge by peers within the medical community. That cannot be said for any whack-a-doodle doctor who wants to raise a fuss on social media or get her face on TV.

Second, there’s a convincing unanimity of opinion among those chief medical officers. If you’ve listened to Covid updates from the medical officers from all ten provinces and Dr. Tam, plus a half dozen contributors to the Ontario Science Table, you’ve heard from around twenty members of the medical community. They all agree that vaccines work and they matter. They all agree that social distancing is important and masks are important in populated indoor spaces. And then you add in Dr. Fauci in the States and experts in developed countries all around the world and you find that by and large they agree on the basics. There is debate on restrictions (effectiveness of travel bans, school closures), but there is no serious disagreement about the basics. I suppose what this all says is that the consensus opinion of the majority of the medical community is much more convincing than any one individual expert could ever be. If an individual with a contrary opinion is unable to convince his or her peers, it probably means that data doesn’t really support the position they’ve expounded.

The only way to seriously dispute the overwhelming consensus of the world’s responsible medical community is to claim that covid-19 is a hoax and the “so-called government experts” are part of a gigantic conspiracy. The problem for conspiracy theorists is that the theory doesn’t withstand any significant scrutiny. Who is leading the conspiracy? Who are the committed members? What is the goal or objective of the conspiracy? How are the secrets of the conspiracy maintained across thousands of participants world-wide? What keeps the conspiracy together without the occasional internal conflict resulting in a whistle-blowing break-up? The nature of a conspiracy dictates that it must be a small and tightly held. A giant world-wide conspiracy to falsify Covid vaccine requirements? Please.

I suppose I am an establishment kind of guy, as this gentleman seems to believe. The great thing about this great country of ours is that the establishment is OUR establishment. If we become convinced that our government has been incompetent in selecting qualified experts to staff the establishment positions, we are able to vote that government out of office. Hopefully, we elect a government which does a better job of process management to keep our establishment staffed with competent people. Indeed, one of the biggest bones that I have to pick with Justin Trudeau is that he has consistently displayed a disdain for process. He’s arrogant enough to believe that the Prime Minister’s office is in charge and he can ignore important processes when it suits his purpose. So, for a great photo-op he chose a high-profile astronaut to be Governor General, and allowed her to bring dishonour to that office. He entrusted some $900 Million to family friends who ran the WE Charity, and allowed his family to get paid for speaking at WE events. He made a determined effort to violate the office of the Attorney General of Canada to get his preferred resolution to the SNC-Lavalin trial.

Citizens shouldn’t turn their backs on experts appointed to key establishment positions, and put their faith in snake oil salesmen and loud-mouthed anti-establishment whack-a-doodle experts. Instead, they should ensure that the government is using established processes properly to maintain the competence of the establishment. And to do that, they should use appropriate information sources to monitor what government is doing, and they should continue to exercise their voting privileges to keep government accountable for using appropriate process. It takes a little effort on the part of the concerned citizen. But relying on conspiracy theory – that’s just lazy thinking.

It’s not nearly as difficult as you might think it is to know who to believe. Do your research, find good sources and stick to them. It’s fine – in fact it’s important – to read contrary points of view, but it’s vital that you check facts and understand the biases that might lie behind those contrary opinions.