Mindful Monday - Information Laundering

Happy Monday :)

From "Traffic" and "Scarface" to "Breaking Bad" to "Ozark” there have been and are hundreds to thousands of television shows and movies based on cartels. The movies are designed for those who want to escape from the real world into the world of cartels, fast dealing, illegal trafficking, and money laundering. Specifically, there is one common denominator that runs consistently through them all, money, and thus money laundering. That is, taking dirty money earned by cartels through illegal methods, and running the money through legitimate enterprises to clean the money so that it can be used for legitimate uses. The primary focus I wish to highlight in today’s Mindful Monday is dirty to clean, no matter what it is. And just like money can be laundered by the means and motives of corrupt and crafty cartels, it made me consider that this is no different than what is happening today with information. Are we being fed laundered information – dirty thus bad information deemed clean because it has been run through a perceived legitimate source?

Today I was reading an article about how the New England Journal of Medicine rescinded a study they published in 2020. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is recognized as the world's leading medical journal and website. Published continuously for over 200 years, NEJM delivers high-quality, peer-reviewed research and interactive clinical content to physicians, educators, researchers, and the global medical community. It is rare that they would ever retract a study because what makes the New England Journal of Medicine so respected is that the information in the studies is peer-reviewed. Apparently, the information on this study was not peer-reviewed, because if it had been, the peers would have realized the company who published the research was essentially fake and that the study was never performed. What made this particular retraction even more notable was the fact that a second well-known medical journal also published the same study and also later retracted it only after it became widely known that the company who published the study was fake, and thus the data was corrupt. The fact that two highly esteemed journals published the same studies suggests that it was not a random accident. Just like money, information may also be laundered. Here, the medical community at large was fed dirty information deemed clean by an esteemed publication, highly suggesting the fact that dirty information is being cleaned all around us.

From everyday common conversations to the written, spoken, and publicized news, to the “peer-reviewed” data being released by government institutions, now, more than ever, we must be vigilant, responsible, and cautionary when it comes to consuming and thus spreading information. Being conscientious about your business, your life, and your choices in the New Year will require that you be attentive and diligent in determining where you receive information and how much value you place on that information when making decisions that impact your life and the lives of those that you love, both family and friends.

Here are six ways to make better choices in 2022 by locating and then relying on good information to make informed decisions.

Doveryai, no proveryai - Suzanne Massie, an American scholar, met with Ronald Reagan many times while he was president of the United States. She taught him the Russian proverb Doveryai, no proveryai (???????, ?? ????????) meaning 'trust, but verify'. This is great advice for anyone. We no longer live in a day and age where you can believe what the newspaper, blog, nightly newscast, or medical journal is reporting. But even if we did, it is simply not prudent to believe something just because it is published, even if it is something that many others believe. Remember, those others believe it because most have accepted information without verifying it. Trust but verify is about authenticating the veracity of anything and everything you believe to be the truth.

Test Online Search Algorithms – When doing any type of online research, try multiple search engines. Google has an algorithm for deciding what you will see, not to mention that it’s compiling data about you as you search. Try many search engines when doing online research to see how the information changes depending on what search engine or source you are using.

Develop Your Sources – Great reporters do it. Great CIA field agents do it. All of us do it to a certain extent. Now, more than ever, it’s important to determine who you are willing to believe more than what you are willing to believe. Remember Eddie Haskell, the pesky and duplicitous neighbor on Leave It to Beaver?  Those who knew him well understood that he couldn’t be trusted and that he was always up to no good. In other words, he seemed helpful, honest, friendly, and complimentary, but it was only a means to an end. He was a deceitful, reckless, and harmful faker who could put on a mask to get what he wanted out of people. The point here, he’s not the type of person anyone would want to be exchanging information with. Be careful with whom you trust when it comes to receiving information.

Harvest Data – There is a difference between real data and any of the online search engines. If you find yourself wanting to believe a story, try to locate the source of the information. Charles Seife’s book Proofiness – How You Are Being Fooled By the Numbers offers a great read as to how data can easily be manipulated to fit any story, and thus the only way to get accurate information is to read the data – not a news story about the data, not a quote about the data, not a summary of the data, not an interpretation of the data, but rather, it is absolutely pertinent to read the actual data yourself. As Seife points out, any time a news headline spouts data, the hair on the back of your neck should stand up. Don’t believe the headline, go find the data and read it.

What’s In It for Them? – When absorbing any news, videos, or articles that you find yourself wanting to believe, it’s important to ask yourself these questions:

1.      What does this piece want the reader/listener to believe?
2.      Who is the reporter/writer and why does he want the reader/listener to believe this? What is their intent?
3.      Who is the owner of the content/article/video and why do they want the reader/listener to believe this? Again, what is their intent?

Information gets laundered all the time. It is delivered/cleaned through sources that are perceived by most to be unbiased and legitimate so that once the story is “cleaned” it can then go out into the world to be put to use by the organization or individual that cleaned it.

Why Draw a Line in the Sand? – There are certain things that have become hard to talk about in today’s world, including politics, pandemics, and more. By taking a hard stance and having a closed mind when speaking about these subjects it is too easy to draw a line in the sand, where neither side gets the opportunity to understand the other. There’s more to life than politics and pandemics, such as how to get good information that will enable you to make smarter decisions in a very complicated world.

What’s the moral of the story? The ability to find clarity is simple. Finding the absolute, provable facts, and not distorting them to match a narrative, is the key to finding truth in anything. It is difficult. It is dirty work. It is time-consuming. And it is lonely. Remarkably, if you can achieve this, you will no longer ever be alone. Instead of easily accepting information that is being cleaned, find the data and facts that never had to be cleaned, and then care enough to do something about what you have learned.