With Easter Sunday falling on April fool’s day, last weekend seemed a more than appropriate time to be thinking about truth and truthfulness.
There is no doubt that information is easier to access now than at any time in history. Older readers may remember carrying piles of photocopied materials from a library when undertaking any form of dissertation or review. This sort of literature review is now easily undertaken, often more thoroughly, in the bath with a smart phone and a glass of your choice.
The issue now is no longer finding access to reference material, but instead verifying the accuracy of the material found. For scientific truth, I have previously recommended the Cochrane Review online. All readers should access this for a sober and evidence-based view on matters such as blue light impact, nutritional impact on eye disease, and other areas where commercial influences may skew some of the available published material.
This is not fail safe, of course. A nice paper in the latest Optometry in Practice has attempted to look at the evidence base of some of the key components of the routine eye examination. Where a Cochrane review is available for any technique, such as say use of antibiotic drops in bacterial conjunctivitis, such evidence suggests such action will improve the chances of remission. Most interventions however, such as using bifocals for convergence excess treatment, fall short as there is too little high quality research published from which to draw a conclusion.
Last month, Science Journal published a review of 126,000 news stories recently tweeted. By a process of fact checking, the researchers found a significant preference for people to view and spread news that was novel, despite the majority being false. Furthermore, the use of robots to filter and disperse news contributed to increasing spread of falsehood. Be wary of news feeds that are run by algorithms.