Confronting Misinformation with Dr. Jevin West

How to spot misinformation with Prof. Jevin West, Director of the nonpartisan Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington. This episode is a live online event on how you can avoid falling for the attempts to mislead that are all around us. The spread of misinformation is among the most pressing challenges of our time. New platforms for human interaction and information sharing have opened the door to misinformation, disinformation and other forms of networked manipulation, which not only mislead and create divisions, but also diminish trust in democratic institutions such as science and journalism. 

Jevin West provides us with a powerful set of tools to cut through the most intimidating data. You don't need a lot of technical expertise to call out problems with data. Are the numbers or results too good or too dramatic to be true? Is the claim comparing like with like? Is it confirming your personal bias? Drawing on a deep well of expertise in statistics and computational biology, Jevin West provides examples of selection bias and muddled data visualization, distinguish between correlation and causation, and examine the susceptibility of science to modern misinformation.