SOCIAL MEDIA SESSIONS – FACT AND SOURCE CHECKING IS IMPERATIVE: WHEN CONFIRMATION BIAS TAKES OVER

Somebody on my Facebook feed shared the picture (leftmost) and a very damning caption. I’m using this to illustrate just how easily trashy fake news spreads through innocent people – and usually carrying damaging disinformation along with it, to potentially hundreds or thousands of people; enabling lies and anti-vax propaganda to continue.

Luckily this time, some rational people stepped up to help in discerning the false claims and fact checking it, applying some critical thinking to the process. This is commendable. Shortly after, roughly 40 mins after posting, the post was also deleted – which I want to stress is also commendable. This signals the sharer humbled themselves and changed their mind, instead of digging in their heels or doubling down.

Lastly, I want to highlight that this is a brilliant example of confirmation bias taking hold, and what happens when you don’t apply critical thinking and reason/logic into your daily life where necessary, which is a difficult thing for us all to train ourselves to do.

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Prior Assumptions & Logical Fallacies

A healthy dose of skepticism would have been appropriate here from the start. Let’s start with the caption on the original post:

“Imagine choosing to kill your child”

This is teeming with prior assumptions and opinions towards vaccines. It’s meant to paint a picture. Let’s be honest though, I think nobody would actually choose to get their child vaccinated if they believed it may kill them, or with intent to kill them (and even if they did, they wouldn’t succeed!).

It is nothing more than a logical fallacy; the appeal to emotion (manipulating an emotional response in place of valid or compelling evidence) might be the closest fit.

Next up:

“Love how the article (link below) does everything it can not to mention the vaccine being the cause of the death”

Having personally read the article, the above comment is something one could possibly only conclude if you were already convinced of the premise and not intent on knowing the truth, so that the source, the facts, any form of due diligence goes straight out of the window. This is the definition of confirmation bias. The picture was shared solely because it confirmed what the poster already believes. This combined with the fact that it was completely fabricated (originally, not by the sharer) to play on people’s biases and emotions, makes it literally anti-vax propaganda, and disinformation.

If you read an article in which there is no mention of vaccines as the cause of death (or even COVID for that matter), not even a hint, then that is something that should go against this presumption, not support it; this is akin to conspiracy thinking. Otherwise, what amount of disconfirming evidence could ever change your mind? By the same logic, you could assume any death which you don’t know the cause of is due to a vaccine.

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The Facts

As revealed by the helpful comments, it didn’t take much effort at all to fact check this lie and clear up some key factors:

1. The purposefully provocative picture is not of the mother and the boy who died. This photo is used purely to appeal to emotion: the “boastful” mother laughing as her child cries (come on, children cry in basically any medical situation – it’s scary!).

2. The boy who did die hadn’t even received the vaccine.

3. As someone pointed out and as is covered above, you can’t draw the conclusion that vaccines had anything to do with the death, there is literally nothing to support that.

4. The link to a fact checking article in which the mother in the picture has her say, and all the facts are listed to debunk it, was posted. This is the link.

At this point there is enough to safely dismiss the post as fake. But I just wanted to touch further on the original article of the boy who died as well. The piece is actually more of a tribute/remembrance to the boy who died, which isn’t even intended to address the nature of the death in detail; it focuses on the mothers’ tribute to him and the fact that they raised a large amount of money in honour of him. So even if we ignore everything above and pretend that the vaccine was the cause of death, it still doesn’t read like a cover up, or as though they ‘try to avoid mentioning it’. This is a touching remembrance of her son and the generosity of her community, that’s all.

Secondly, it does mention in the piece:

“He had allergies, and asthma, and he was poorly a lot.”

Which if any, is the only insight into risk factors for this death. We also know that he wasn’t vaccinated, so it plausibly could have been COVID-19 that triggered it – but even without the COVID hypothesis this can and does just happen to some children, for various other reasons. It is clear that he was vulnerable of health in general. What you can’t attribute to death in this case, is vaccines, as he wasn’t vaccinated. Furthermore:

“For us, lockdown was a gift. He came under shielding…”

The fact that he came under shielding means he was deemed particularly vulnerable to the virus, and therefore we can infer from this that he was likely susceptible to other health risks which most children would not be.

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Conclusions

We have determined after checking the original source (the first article), that the picture of the vaccination taking place is completely unrelated to the article, and to the death of the child. We’ve also determined that nothing about the original post is tangible beyond the claim, and that the way it was presented can most likely be deemed anti-vax propaganda; and that by the fact it was shared on Facebook, it worked.

This is extremely prevalent in social media circles. It is irresponsible and damaging to spread such extreme views publicly, not just from a public health perspective which undermines expertise, science, and honest discourse, but from an emotional and social perspective. Namely, the victim’s family, and the person whose photo was nefariously used to spread disinformation.

I don’t blame the poster directly for this. If anything, they are themselves a victim of the anti-vax juggernaut and doomscrolling on some level. I know this person to be a thoughtful, intelligent, and empathic human – and this is the point, we are all human. We’re all frequently subject to human biases, and this is why critical thinking skills, scientific skepticism, and objectivity are such valuable skillsets. They are there to control for cognitive biases. As such, I’ll reiterate that it is the content that I am (fairly) criticising – not the sharer.

This piece I’m writing is not an attack, not a ‘gotcha’ or a ‘told you so’, not a shaming piece and not a tool to support my own personal position. It’s an evaluation of the disinformation itself and a case in point for the fact that we all must be aware of our own biases, our actions, and the manner in which we choose to portray them. It’s also a reminder that there are tangible downstream consequences of what we choose to share online, which can influence people’s decisions for their health, and we have to take more individual responsibility in public spaces, regardless of what we ‘believe’ internally.

I hope that this piece highlights the value and the need for critical thinking and respect for logic and reason, fact checking and the open and honest criticism of unsubstantiated claims.

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