To navigate the dangers of the web, you need critical thinking – but also critical ignoring — The Conversation


Kids can be taught to read the web critically.
Os Tartarouchos/Moment/Getty Images

Sam Wineburg, Stanford University

The web is a treacherous place.

A website’s author may not be its author. References that confer legitimacy may have little to do with the claims they anchor. Signals of credibility like a dot-org domain can be the artful handiwork of a Washington, D.C., public relations maven.

Unless you possess multiple Ph.D.’s – in virology, economics and the intricacies of immigration policy – often the wisest thing to do when landing on an unfamiliar site is to ignore it.

Learning to ignore information is not something taught in school. School teaches the opposite: to read a text thoroughly and closely before rendering judgment. Anything short of that is rash.

But on the web, where a witches’ brew of advertisers, lobbyists, conspiracy theorists and foreign governments conspire to hijack attention, the same strategy spells doom. Online, critical ignoring is just as important as critical thinking.

That’s because, like a pinball bouncing from bumper to bumper, our attention careens from notification to text message to the next vibrating thing we must check.

The cost of all this overabundance, as the late Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon observed, is scarcity. A flood of information depletes attention and fractures the ability to concentrate.

Modern society, wrote Simon, faces a challenge: to learn to “allocate attention efficiently among the overabundance of sources that might consume it.”

We’re losing the battle between attention and information.

A man at a desk with several computer screens and looking at his cellphone.
It’s possible to learn how to ignore what’s calling to us from the web.
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‘Glued to the site’

As an applied psychologist, I study how people determine what is true online.

My research team at Stanford University recently tested a national sample of 3,446 high school students on their ability to evaluate digital sources. Armed with a live internet connection, students examined a website that claims to “disseminate factual reports” on climate science.

Students were asked to judge whether the site was reliable. A screen prompt reminded them that they could search anywhere online to reach their answer.

Instead of leaving the site, the vast majority did exactly what school teaches: They stayed glued to the site – and read. They consulted the “About” page, clicked on technical reports, and examined graphs and charts. Unless they happened to possess a master’s degree in climate science, the site, filled with the trappings of academic research, looked, well, pretty good.

The few students – less than 2% – who learned the site was backed by the fossil fuel industry did so not because they applied critical thinking to its contents. They succeeded because they hopped off the website and consulted the open web. They used the web to read the web.

As a student who searched the internet for the group’s name wrote: “It has ties to large companies that want to purposefully mislead people when it comes to climate change. According to USA Today, Exxon has sponsored this nonprofit to pump out misleading information on climate change.”

Instead of getting tangled up in the site’s reports or suckered into its neutral-sounding language, this student did what professional fact checkers do: She evaluated the site by leaving it. Fact checkers engage in what we call lateral reading, opening up new tabs across the top of their screens to search for information about an organization or individual before diving into a site’s contents.

Only after consulting the open web do they gauge whether expending attention is worth it. They know that the first step in critical thinking is knowing when to deploy it.

A man in a suit standing in a rowboat on a sea filled with binary symbols.
A flood of information depletes attention and fractures the ability to concentrate.
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Critical thinking

The good news is that students can be taught to read the internet this way.

In an online nutrition course at the University of North Texas, we embedded short instructional videos that demonstrated the dangers of dwelling on an unknown site and taught students how to evaluate it.

At the beginning of the course, students were duped by features that are ludicrously easy to game: a site’s “look,” the presence of links to established sources, strings of scientific references or the sheer quantity of information a site provides.

On the test we gave at the beginning of the semester, only three in 87 students left a site to evaluate it. By the end, over three-quarters did. Other researchers, teaching the same strategies, have found similarly hopeful results.

Learning to resist the lure of dubious information demands more than a new strategy in students’ digital tool box. It requires the humility that comes from facing one’s vulnerability: that despite formidable intellectual powers and critical thinking skills, no one is immune to the slippery ruses plied by today’s digital rogues.

By dwelling on an unfamiliar site, imagining ourselves smart enough to outsmart it, we squander attention and cede control to the site’s designers.

Spending a few moments vetting the site by drawing on the awesome powers of the open web, we regain control and with it our most precious resource: Our attention.

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Sam Wineburg, Professor of Education and (by courtesy) History, Stanford University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Testing water quality below #GrizzlyFire burn scar — The Sopris Sun #ColoradoRiver #COriver #aridification

The Grizzly Creek Fire jumped Grizzly Creek north of Glenwood Canyon. (Provided by the City of Glenwood Springs)

From The Sopris Sun (Olivia Emmer):

Recently, the Middle Colorad Watershed Council was awarded a grant from the Colorado River District to help fund water quality testing related to the impacts of the Grizzly Creek Fire burn scar. This $50,000 grant is matched by resources from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The USGS will provide real-time data to downstream water users about the quality of water flowing down the Colorado River…

This grant ensured that four USGS Next Generation Water Observing System continuous water quality testing locations were installed or enhanced between the east end of Glenwood Canyon and the west end of De Beque canyon. The grant also covers discrete sampling at four sites between Grizzly Creek and South Canyon. Timing was critical for the organizations to capture baseline water quality data before spring runoff and any monsoon events began transporting material off the scar and into streams.

Continuous observing systems test water quality as it passes by, in-stream. According to USGS Supervisory Hydrologist Cory A. Williams, “concentrations of suspended sediment, nutrients, dissolved organic carbon and other naturally occurring constituents from a burned landscape can increase in downstream water bodies after wildfires.” The monitoring equipment measures water temperature, specific conductance, dissolved oxygen, pH and turbidity, and sends it to the USGS National Water Information System (NWIS) website…

According to Stepp, most of the towns along this section of the river rely on water directly from the Colorado River, though some have multiple sources. MCWC is eager to provide outreach to regional water managers, to make sure they have access to this new data in hopes it protects regional water infrastructure. Anyone can visit the USGS site and set up an NWIS water alert, which will send automated email or text messages when water quality measurements exceed a threshold for selected criteria at a specific location…

As of May 5, the USGS had not yet seen unusual data from spring runoff due to the burn scar. Again, Williams: “So far, recent rainfall has decreased water temperatures and specific conductance levels, and has increased turbidity levels, with minor changes to dissolved oxygen and pH. These changes follow the typical ranges and patterns we would expect at this time of year and do not appear to show a strong influence from the wildfire.”

#Runoff news (May 16, 2021): Commercial rafters unsure how much Blue River will run next month — The Summit Daily

From The Summit Daily (Antonio Olivero):

Kevin Foley, president of Performance Tours Rafting, said Friday, May 14, that recent reports he has received from Denver Water indicate the organization is likely to prioritize filling the Dillon Reservoir.

“What we are being told is, right now, the reservoir is low and snowpack is below average, so their model this year going to be more fill and spill,” Foley said.

Each spring and summer, Denver Water determines how much water it will release into the Blue River north of the Dillon Dam based on how much water is needed in different locations throughout an intricate network of water systems and reservoirs that service water users.

Foley said current conditions and a low water level in Dillon Reservoir point to Denver Water filling the reservoir with any new snow or rain in the coming weeks, rather than diverting flows downstream into the Blue River.

Foley said he will find out more from Denver Water at a meeting next week, but as of now, he said it’s unlikely there will be an extended season on the Blue…

The Class 2 to 3 Blue River stretch, which usually takes just over an hour for commercial trips, runs 5 to 6 miles from a U.S. Forest Service put-in at Hammer Bridge through Boulder Canyon down to a take-out at Columbine Landing. Foley said Performance Tours and KODI Rafting’s cutoff for the stretch is usually 500 cfs, signaling when they can start and stop. He said the best rafting on the Blue is at 1,000 cfs.

The commercial rafting season on the Blue is notoriously fickle, sometimes very short at just a couple of weeks in dry years to up to two months of rafting in wet seasons…

Foley said drainages down on the Arkansas River near Buena Vista are looking much better than the Blue. He credited the voluntary flow management program on the Arkansas that enables commercial companies to raft on good, augmented flows deep into summer. Trips out of Buena Vista have been operating for some commercial companies since May 1.

Parts of #BoulderCreek still impaired because of elevated levels of E. coli — The #Burlington Record

Boulder Creek. Photo credit: Susan from Alameda, CA, USA – CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2536150

From The Boulder Daily Camera (Katie Langford) via The Burlington Record:

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment designated a stretch of Boulder Creek from the mouth of Boulder Canyon through Boulder’s Eben G. Fine Park as impaired in December 2019, and that assessment has not changed…

The city is continuing its program to better understand sewer sheds and creek inflow, Owen said, though it continues to be a “very challenging problem” not only in Boulder, but across the state.

City officials cannot prevent people from entering the creek, but the city has installed signs cautioning people about entering the water, Owen said…

The state continues to monitor Boulder’s progress on reducing E. coli levels, Nason said, and will likely reevaluate water quality in 2023 and updating the creek’s impairment status in 2025.

Boulder Creek/St. Vrain River watershed. Map credit: Keep It Clean Partnership