News Literacy: News Views & Fact Checking Resources: Skepticism as a Tool

Excerpt: I would say really be careful where you get your information from; really take responsibility for what you read, listen to and watch; make sure that you go to the trusted brands to get your main information, no matter whether you have a wide, eclectic intake, really stick with the brand names that you know, because in this world right now, at this moment right now, our crises, our challenges, our problems are so severe, that unless we are all engaged as global citizens who appreciate the truth, who understand science, empirical evidence and facts, then we are just simply going to be wandering along to a potential catastrophe.

Excerpts:
*One way to make numbers more accurate is to have as many people as possible be able to question them.
* Three questions that will help you be able to spot some bad statistics.
1) Can you see uncertainty?
There are a lot of reasons why polling has become so inaccurate. Our societies have become really diverse, which makes it difficult for pollsters to get a really nice representative sample of the population for their polls. People are really reluctant to answer their phones to pollsters, and also, shockingly enough, people might lie.... a lot of data visualizations will overstate certainty, and it works -- these charts can numb our brains to criticism. When you hear a statistic, you might feel skeptical. As soon as it's buried in a chart, it feels like some kind of objective science, and it's not.