There’s a simple test to perform when you’re not sure whether what you’re reading is true or false. It doesn’t matter if you received the article, video, audio or photograph in question on WhatsApp or are reading it/watching it on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, or even if it’s on the news.
You have to check if it’s ‘a nice’ source (it’s better capitalised like so: A NICE).
A NICE stands for:
A = authoritative (is the source of the information an expert in the matter?)
N = named (has the source of the information been identified?)
I = independent (does the source of the information have a conflict of interest?)
C = corroboration (is there someone else backing up the claim?)
E = evidence (does the article contain any evidence?)
Let’s use A NICE analysis with three examples, each one more difficult than the other.
1.
This is from the first year of the pandemic. Forwards like this one were commonly shared across apps on phones.
Using A NICE analysis, we can swiftly conclude that:
No person has been named as the source of this source. It is neither authoritative nor named.
It fails the independence test as well, because there is no way to say if the sender of the message has a conflict of interest or ulterior motive. One can conclude that most people who shared this message might not have known what approach worked and didn’t work during a time of great uncertainty and anxiety.
Even though this message was shared a multiple times, there isn’t any corroboration for this message from actual experts, such as infectious disease professionals.
Finally, there is no evidence presented in the image above.
On all counts, it fails the A NICE analysis.
If only all messages were this simple.
2.
This anti-vaccine message is a little more difficult to debunk, but the framework that we applied works well here too.
It is both named and authoritative in the sense that Luc Montagnier is a real person and moreover is a Nobel Prize winner. Montagnier, a Frenchman, won the prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008 for discovering HIV. (He passed away at the age of 89 on 8th February 2022.)
So should we believe the above forward? Not so fast.
One, even a basic internet search will reveal that Montagnier made several controversial claims in the last decade of his life. For example, this obituary by The Guardian reveals that he claimed that HIV could be cured by diet. It further notes:
“In 2017 more than 100 members of the French academies of science and medicine published an open letter condemning him for spreading “dangerous health messages outside of his field of knowledge.”
Two, while Montagnier appears to have made many anti-vaccine remarks in his life, did he actually say everyone who takes the vaccine will die in two years?
My colleague Shachi Sutaria establishes that he did not say any such thing in this fact-check. She writes,
“Although the WhatsApp message includes a link to an interview given to lifesitenews.com, the article itself has no mention of Montagnier saying that the recipients of the COVID-19 vaccine will die in two years.”
Moreover, RAIR Foundation issued a statement that Montagnier made no such claim in this interview.
So this is a case where the author of the WhatsApp forward was a real person (named) and authoritative, but he wasn’t necessarily independent.
And I can’t stress this enough, he never said that the vaccine would kill people.
Neither does the message offer any corroboration nor any evidence. On 3 of 5 counts, the viral forward fails the A NICE test.
3.
We now come to the third, and most difficult of the three examples, because it blends together what I call the three Fs: fact, fiction, feeling.
But first, let’s see if the A NICE analysis is useful here.
The message is both authoritative and named. Lord Macaulay was a British politician, infamous for his ‘Minute Upon Indian Education’ (more on this later).
What about the independence of the source? We don’t know who created this image. While the content of the message is attributed to Macaulay, the source of this message is anonymous.
Next, did Lord Macaulay actually say those things in the message? Do a quick internet search with the keywords “Lord Macaulay” and “fact check”, and you will find multiple fact-checks. These indicate that Macaulay did not actually say those words at the British parliament on those dates or at any other date.
In fact, this fact-check shows that the very same message has been circulated widely in Africa, with the words ‘Africa’ instead of ‘India’. Moreover, the person in the image is not Macaulay but Sir Henry John William Bentick.
In sum, the above message fails the corroboration and evidence test.
What the message does do, however, is blend together fact, fiction and feeling. Let’s see:
Fact: Lord Macaulay did have a poor opinion of Sanskrit, Arabic and other Indian languages. He famously argued in ‘Minute Upon Indian Education’ that support for English and Arabic books ought to be withdrawn. He is famous for having said this:
“We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect”
Fiction: As we have established, the above forwarded image misrepresents Macaulay’s photograph and attributes a quote to him that he never uttered. It is full of fiction.
Feeling: However, we all know that it is entirely plausible that the attitudes represented in the forward above were held by Macaulay and his contemporaries.
In such cases, our job becomes a challenging one. We must acknowledge that the forwarded image above does contain a truth even though it doesn’t have any facts.
We can continue to discuss the third example, but one thing is clear: the A NICE framework is useful.
One doesn’t need to be a fact-checker to use the framework. All we need is a little common sense, and the ability to do an internet search, before we share such forwards.