FAQ’s
If you believe I’ve made a mistake, please feel free to contact me! I try to be as accurate as possible, but I am Just Some Guy and am very much capable of mistakes. However, if you have a correction, please include a source. Please don’t just send in your opinions - keep it factual.
My rating system:
🟢 Reliable 🟢 - Entirely accurate, supported by reliable sources.🟨 Mostly Reliable 🟨 - Generally accurate, but may be slightly misleading (ie by omitting relevant contradictory information), or may contain a minor error.
🔶Partially Reliable 🔶 - Includes some reliable information, but also includes errors.
❌ Unreliable ❌ - Misinformation. May include some small amounts of factual information, but is mostly unreliable, or the overall impression is misleading/incorrect.
I also rate things as TBC (To Be Confirmed) when I feel I do not have enough reliable information to rate a post as reliable or not reliable.
I try to add an image description whenever needed, but if I forget feel free to message me about it!
Responses to my fact checks are tagged #peer review
Information on requests:
If you would like something fact checked, feel free to link me in an ask! However, due to the volume of requests, I am unable to check all of them.
I generally try to prioritize factual posts (rather than primarily opinion based) that do not have any sources. I also generally do not fact check posts that are taken directly from a reliable source, such as screenshots from a news article.
sent a message
I wanted to practice media literacy, but something that keeps coming up is reaffirming to trust what a majority of scientists and doctors believe rather than the fringe ones who may be trying to sell you something. And I agree with that, but I keep getting this bad feeling in the back of my mind because, well, I remember learning about how a lot of different scientific fields are based in ableism, racism, misogyny, etc. Like, for example, a majority of doctors in the US are in favour of invasive and traumatizing surgeries on intersex infants to "fix" them, while intersex adults advocate against these surgeries.
Will this come up in the later courses and discussions on media literacy? Stuff like, trusting the scientific method even if the general consensus is scewed due to being a part of an oppressive system? Thank you ☆
hi! so first of all, I want to start by saying this is probably outside of the scope of this blog to definitively answer - this kind of issue could be debated forever. Also, I want to clarify that I’m not trying to give a ‘course’ here, I’m not a teacher in any way, I’m just some guy who likes fact checking
So with that in mind, I think we should definitely acknowledge that scientific communites are made up of people, who all have their own biases. Social beliefs absolutely have, and will continue, to affect our scientific understanding. That being said, I don’t think that bias is inherent to the scientific method - in actuality, it’s the opposite. When biases affect the research, that’s bad science, which is exactly what media literacy and scientific literacy helps us distinguish. Essentially, I don’t think that these biases are a reason to not practice media literacy. Media literacy is what helps us to think critically about these things.
To use your own example, surgical intervention on intersex infants was based on little data, and became the normalised ‘treatment’ before any rigorous studies were done. It’s the introduction of proper scientific method in medical care that has helped to change our understanding of surgical intervention, and is now pushing to limit surgeries on intersex infants.
From the American Journal of Bioethics: ‘However, the main empirical premises behind this approach, namely, that significant psychosocial benefits would in fact accrue to the child because of early surgery and that these benefits would, moreover, reliably outweigh the associated risks of physical and mental harm, were never subjected to rigorous testing (Creighton and Liao Citation2004; Liao et al. Citation2019). Rather, standard practice in this area became entrenched and institutionalized long before the advent of modern evidence-based medicine (Diamond and Beh Citation2008; Garland and Travis Citation2020a; Dalke, Baratz, and Greenberg Citation2020) as well as key developments in bioethics and children’s rights (Brennan Citation2003; Reis Citation2019; Alderson Citation2023; Gheaus Citation2024).‘
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hey, are there any other fact-checking blogs out there just like you?/genq the more fact-checking blogs, the merrier!/pos
also props to you you are doing some extremely helpful and important work on here
hi! thank you! there were a few blogs made after I made mine (I encouraged anyone who was interested to make their own fact checking blog, and gave shout outs to these blogs at the time), but as far as I know all of these are now either deactivated/inactive sadly
if anyone else knows of other fact checking blogs on here, feel free to mention it in the comments!
Okay now I kind of want to start my own one, but I may need to brush up on my researching skills. Whats your process for finding sources, if you don't mind me asking?
hi! I’ve written about this before here.
sent a message
hey cro did you uurmmm. perchance reblog that to the wrong blog quashing mark
why does this keep happening to me
yeah, I was the dasher actually
oh my god. I was so delighted by the cryptid that I momentarily forgot that I have more than one blog
sent a message
Just wanted to say-- as someone else with the research and fact checking autism-- that this is a neat blog!
hey, thank you pal!!
🟨 Rating: Mostly Reliable 🟨
Penny Auctions did indeed occur when farms were foreclosed on by the bank, and often did involve weapons to warn people against bidding higher, as well as to threaten the bank officers themselves.
From Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History, via enyclopedia.com: ‘The penny auctions involved farmers bidding a few cents for a neighbor’s farm to re-purchase it, and if a few cents (pennies) did not clear the bank debt, then the bank officers were physically threatened.’
From an NPR interview with historian Professor Hy Berman: 'When farms were foreclosed in those days, they were foreclosed by the bank, and the bank immediately established some kind of auction to sell off the assets. And the Farm Holiday Association organized farmers to come en masse to these auctions and to bid one cent, two cents, three cents, three bids as a legal auction. They took with them various weapons of persuasion - pitchforks, hunting rifles, knives - and were able to compel the success of the penny auction so much so that auctions were often stopped in mid-stream before they could go any further.’
The photo itself is somewhat harder to verify. The version above can be found at the library of congress here, with the title 'Two hangman’s nooses hang as a grim warning to prospective bidders on this foreclosed farm. In this way many farms sold for only a few cents until the Farm Debt Adjustment Committee came into being’. It is credited as being taken or published in May 1936 by Acme Newspictures, but does not make any reference to Michigan as seen above.
I did want to note that despite the title, the Farm Debt Adjustment Committee actually started in 1933, three years prior to the date given for the photograph.
I did also find an alternative copy of the photo as a stock photo here. This site claims the photo was taken in February 1933, and the image is clearer. Notably, there is a name on the barn in this version - 1916, L.B. Schaller Farm. I would trust the Libary of Congress over this site, and suspect AI may have been used to clean up the image, but I am including it for completeness.
If anyone finds any other details on the photo, please let me know!
sent a message
Hey, could you fact check this one:
@is-the-post-reliable is pretty neat
RATING: 🟢 Reliable 🟢
Source: trust me bro
sent a message
hey, are there any other fact-checking blogs out there just like you?/genq the more fact-checking blogs, the merrier!/pos
also props to you you are doing some extremely helpful and important work on here
hi! thank you! there were a few blogs made after I made mine (I encouraged anyone who was interested to make their own fact checking blog, and gave shout outs to these blogs at the time), but as far as I know all of these are now either deactivated/inactive sadly
if anyone else knows of other fact checking blogs on here, feel free to mention it in the comments!
tis done, your majesty