“Trust. But verify.”
That was President Ronald Reagan’s perspective on international diplomacy. Increasingly, that is advice all individuals, all the time, need to apply. On Amazon.com, for instance, roughly 80 percent of all reviews are four stars or higher, a positive perspective that defies human nature. Yelp!, which knows that fake reviews undermine its entire business model, claims a proprietary fraud-detection system stops at least 20 percent of all reviews before they reach the public. According to computer scientist Bing Liu, who studies online fraud, roughly 30 percent of all reviews across the Internet are fraudulent. Yet, 70 percent of global consumers trust online consumer reviews, up from 55 percent just four years ago. Review fraud is increasing, and trust in those reviews is also increasing. Is this ignorance or indifference to accuracy?
The Reagan perspective needs to be used much more widely than just for consumer reviews on the Internet. A recent study of biomedical journals discovered that use of manipulated data or fraudulent professional reviews has increased 10 fold since 1975 – and that study only counted frauds that were caught. In September alone, several journals, including Experimental Parasitology and Pharmaceutical Biology discovered that nearly 30 papers had made their way to publication by using fake peer reviews. The reviews, which are routinely solicited by the journal to assess the papers’ worthiness for publication, were fraudulent, most commonly being reviews by fake professionals created by the authors themselves.
The Internet has put an enormous amount of information at everyone’s fingertips, and now those wanting to use that incredible resource are having to deal with the effects of the intentional polluting of that information. Has deception and fraud become so commonplace that those trying to detect it constantly lag the deceivers? What does that say about nearly all kinds of societal interactions, including those in retail, advertising, medicine, equities, religion, politics, education, marketing and on and on? Is there any place individuals can place their trust? Is there room for an independent, non-aligned business to validate information?
Hmmm, fact checking, the new black.
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