Do you trust Snopes.com?

“Snopes is the one, has been for over 20 years.”

Same answer I gave about 2 weeks ago. They always have a reality check for rumors.

Not entirely. I think they’re not particularly rigorous, and go around looking for other sources and aren’t very critical if the sources they find are mainstream enough. Unfortunately, many mainstream sources can’t be entirely trusted, so I’m skeptical of Snopes’ conclusions particularly on things the mainstream media may be inaccurate about. For silly things, sure. For political and corporate issues, not so much.

They have discredited false information on both the right and the left, so I have found them trustworthy. The right thinks of them as too biased, but that is because so much more false information has come from Breitbart and his ilk.

It depends. On matters where the relevant information is accessible to them, sure—then they typically form a sound conclusion from the evidence.

On things where they can’t possibly have access to the evidence, and rely on second-hand reporting—not so much.

I like them for debunking misattributed and spurious quotes. They’re good at that.

I view Snopes as bait click infotainment. To quote the owner of the site…

“We don’t expect anyone to accept us as the ultimate authority on any topic. ”

Snopes is not anti Alt-right but they keep shining the light on “Faux NEWS” from the right.

@Kropotkin On things where they can’t possibly have access to the evidence, and rely on second-hand reporting—not so much.” that’s when they classify it as “Unproven,” or “Undetermined,” then list the logical reasons why it may, or may not, be true.

It’s not a bad place to start but…this is the internet we are talking about.

@Zaku and @Kropotkin You didn’t type a single fact. You’re throwing lots of doubt with no evidence.

^^^ That’s true. Unlike Snopes.

The couple that started the site are actually right wingers. Which is totally fine since they are the rare Republicans that use real facts.

Well, the husband is a Republican. I think his wife is Canadian.

He (David) claims he is no longer affiliated with a political party. Quote from a 2009 article

“We asked David. He told us that Barbara is a Canadian citizen, and as such isn’t allowed to vote here or contribute money to U.S. candidates. As for him, “My sole involvement in politics is on Election Day to go out and vote. I’ve never joined a party, worked for a campaign or donated money to a candidate.” “You’d be hard-pressed to find two more apolitical people,” David Mikkelson said.”

FWIW…in 2000 he did register as a Republican and today they are now divorced.

Our local newspaper did a report on “fake news” and their assessment is that Snopes can be trusted. Any time I have used it, I have been satisfied about their reports.

@Call_Me_Jay I typed a factual answer to the question of whether I trusted Snopes or not. No one asked for more facts.

Trust your gut feeling and never believe anything if it sounds too good to hear. Those are the rules I like to follow. Talking about Snopes they are pretty good.

I do.

When people would post the most ridiculous statements about Trump, I would check on snopes and actually link the person what snopes said. I am no fan of Trump, without a doubt, but I hate spreading lies and fear mongering.
I found snopes to even out republican lies as well.
If they heard about the topic but could not trace it back to where the rumor began then they would say so and say it was probably false.
When they had the facts then they would post that on either side. For or against both Democrats and Republicans and liberals.

I check information on their site often, and they always pass the smell test.

@Dutchess_III Not entirely!! Somewhat recently they have become “politically correct” and exchanged politics for truth. Once they have done that, as far as I am concerned they blew it!

I trust them. For political stuff, I usually do my own googling, too.

I don’t trust them any more than I trust the media. A lot of the information they get is from the media. Our media is driven by what sells. If it won’t sell, it’s not news.

It’s one of the sites I’ll go to when I want to start checking something that seems off. I’ll follow their links to the sources. I look into other sources as well. So far they’ve done pretty well for my purposes – even if they show someone on the right did something good ;)

@snowberry I agree. This new mentality of if it has lot’s of clicks it must be true or relevant is troublesome to me.

@si3tech Can you provide us with an example of where there were “politically correct” instead of telling the truth?

Yeah. When I hear something about Trump I immediately check it. Even if I really WANT it to be true, thinking “Surely this will be the last straw!”, I still check before I pass it on.

I don’t use Snopes much as most of the ‘facts’ they look into are nonsense that is posted and repeated on social media. I suppose someone should examine this stuff objectively and Snopes seems to do a good job of it. They do the research and so you can respect their conclusions.

Snopes is usually good at listing sources on topics, and updating them, so it’s good for the first-level pass, but for issues that may want a second look, particularly those where mainstream media sources are not neutral and may involve deceptive stories, I would not stop with Snopes.

For example, I don’t trust Snopes’ False verdict on the French study that showed high cancer rates in rats fed GMO corn

Snopes ends the story with the “debunking”, but don’t mention the later French court rulings of use forgery to defame the study.

Here are ten counterpoints by the study’s author, none of which seem to be addressed by Snopes. This is an example of what I mean by Snopes stopping at the mainstream coverage.

Well, be sure to check this before you come to your final conclusion.

@Zaku You know, they have a contact tab. I’m sure they’d welcome your input on that matter.

Another example that seems off to me in terms of presentation if not literal facts is the one about:

“Bernie Sanders says he is going to ban all trucking in the US and build a giant railroad system.”

Which Snopes lists as a “Mixture” of true and false.

The true part: “Bernie Sanders said that an improved rail system could “take trucks off the road.””

The false part: “The 2016 Democratic presidential candidate plans on banning all trucks in the United States.”

I’m an admitted Sanders fan, but I’d call that False, not Mixed. Both the claims are false. The truth has only faint resemblance to the claim.

Well, easy enough to check @Zaku. BRB

He DID say ”...rail system which takes trucks off the road.” It’s right there in the video on Snopes. It’s way toward the end.

(I sent Snopes several suggested articles to review about the GMO health studies.)

@Zaku To be fair to Snopes Professor Seralini’s study was discredited and the article was retracted by the journal in which it appeared because of the inadequate numbers of rats used in the experiment. The forgery story was unfortunate but was not a factor in the discrediting of the study.

The verdict on the Sanders story seems fair to me and Snopes published the facts which led to this verdict so you can at least understand how they arrived at their conclusion whether or not you agree with it.

@flutherother Or, to be even more fair, we could include Seralini’s perspective:

“inconclusiveness of findings is not a valid ground for retraction. Numerous published scientific papers contain inconclusive findings, which are often mixed in with findings that can be presented with more certainty. It is for future researchers to build on the findings and refine scientific understanding of any uncertainties.

It is important that scientists do not overstate their findings or draw conclusions that are not justified by the data, but Prof Séralini’s paper does not do this. Because Prof Séralini’s study was a chronic toxicity study and not a full-scale carcinogenicity study, which normally requires larger numbers of rats, he conservatively did not do a statistical analysis of the tumours and mortality findings. Instead he simply reported them, without drawing definitive conclusions. This is in line with the OECD chronic toxicity protocol, which requires that any “lesions” (including tumours) observed are recorded.[4]

The criticisms of the low number of rats and choice of rat strain have been addressed by Prof Séralini’s team in a comprehensive response to critics that was published in FCT,[5] as well as by independent scientists writing in support of the study.[6]

Experts in statistics writing in support of the study have pointed out that large numbers of animals are only required in safety studies to avoid false negative error, where a toxic effect exists but is missed because too few animals are used. In the case of Séralini’s study, this was not an issue. The toxic effects of the test substances were so pronounced (there was a “large effect size”) that smaller numbers of animals were sufficient for statistical significance.[7,8,9]”

http://www.gmoseralini.org/journal-retraction-of-seralini-study-is-illicit-unscientific-and-unethical/

Maybe, but Seralini’s article was retracted as Snopes reported and they gave the reasons why. I don’t think Snopes can be faulted in this case.

I’ll be interested to see if they ever add anything after having been sent the link.

To be clear, I think Snopes is cool and helpful and tries to (and usually does) do a good job. I just think they sometimes stop digging, so I don’t entirely trust them on topics where I wouldn’t trust the mainstream sources either.

@Call_Me_Jay “You didn’t type a single fact. You’re throwing lots of doubt with no evidence.”

@Dutchess_III ”^^^ That’s true. Unlike Snopes”

I didn’t realise I stumbled upon a Snopes worship forum. There’s me thinking was I was just giving a subjective view of my “trust”.

My answer was brief, but it should still have been clear enough—I’ve my own heuristic for assessing information I see. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Snopes, any other fact checker, or any other source of information. If their sources are clear and objectively verifiable, then I’m likely to be confident about their conclusions. If I think the sources are less clear, then my own confidence is lower—regardless of whether Snopes declares something False or True.

Is that clear? No? Tough. This topic isn’t interesting enough for me to argue about it.

Knock it off with the “worship” crack.

As @Zaku wrote after I criticized you guys, “Snopes is usually good at listing sources on topics”.

Snopes doesn’t make final declarations of “The Truth!” They give you their sources.

They give you the information to prove them wrong if they made a mistake.

who pissed in your Cheerios, Jay?

Trust them better than Fox news.