Tag: University of Washington

Detecting fakes

Another good article from The Conversation.

I make no apologies for returning to the subject of scams and fakes. Because the advances in the equipment we have for viewing the internet are growing appreciably, and quickly.

We should include scams in this topic. Just a couple of days ago I had a text on my cell-phone that purported to have come from the United States Post Office, the USPS, and at first I was taken in. Luckily I left it for a while and then discovered it was a scam.

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No, you’re not that good at detecting fake videos − 2 misinformation experts explain why and how you can develop the power to resist these deceptions

By

  1. Sam Wineburg Professor of Education and (by courtesy) History, Stanford University
  2. Michael Caulfield Research Scientist, Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington
Are you sure you know what that emotionally jarring video clip really shows?
F.J. Jimenez/Moment via Getty Images

Sam Wineburg, Stanford University and Michael Caulfield, University of Washington

Someone tracking the conflict raging in the Middle East could have seen the following two videos on social media. The first shows a little boy hovering over his father’s dead body, whimpering in Arabic, “Don’t leave me.” The second purports to show a pregnant woman with her stomach slashed open and claims to document the testimony of a paramedic who handled victims’ bodies after Hamas’ attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Even though these videos come from different sides of the Israel-Hamas war, what they share far exceeds what separates them. Because both videos, though real, have nothing to do with the events they claim to represent. The clip of the boy is from Syria in 2016; the one of the woman is from Mexico in 2018.

Cheap but effective fakes

Recent headlines warn of sophisticated, AI-driven deepfakes. But it is low-tech cheap fakes like these that fuel the latest round of disinformation. Cheap fakes are the Swiss army knife in the propagandist’s tool belt. Changing a date, altering a location or even repurposing a clip from a video game and passing it off as battlefield combat require little know-how yet effectively sow confusion.

The Israel-Hamas war has unleashed a flood of fake videos on social media.

The good news is that you can avoid being taken in by these ruses – not by examining the evidence closely, which is liable to mislead you, but by waiting until trusted sources verify what you’re looking at. This is often hard to do, however.

Most people are ill-equipped to detect this kind of trickery. Research that we review in our new book, “Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online,” shows that almost everyone falls for it.

In the largest survey of its kind, 3,446 high school students evaluated a video on social media that purported to show election fraud in the 2016 Democratic primary. Students could view the whole video, part of it or leave the footage to search the internet for information about it. Typing a few keywords into their browsers would have led students to articles from Snopes and the BBC debunking the video. Only three students – less than one-tenth of 1% – located the true source of the video, which had, in fact, been shot in Russia.

Your lying eyes

Why were students so consistently duped? The problem, we’ve found, is that many people, young and old alike, think they can look at something online and tell what it is. You don’t realize how easily your eyes can be deceived – especially by footage that triggers your emotions.

When an incendiary video dodges your prefrontal cortex and lands in your solar plexus, the first impulse is to share your outrage with others. What’s a better course of action? You might assume that it is to ask whether the clip is true or false. But a different question – rather, a set of related questions – is a better starting place.

  • Do you really know what you’re looking at?
  • Can you really tell whether the footage is from atrocities committed by Russian forces in the Donbas just because the headline blares it and you’re sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause?
  • Is the person who posted the footage an established reporter, someone who risks their status and prestige if it turns out to be fake, or some random person?
  • Is there a link to a longer video – the shorter the clip, the more you should be wary – or does it claim to speak for itself, even though the headline and caption leave little room for how to connect the dots?

These questions require no advanced knowledge of video forensics. They require you only to be honest with yourself. Your inability to answer these questions should be enough to make you realize that, no, you don’t really know what you’re looking at.

Patience is a powerful tool

Social media reports of “late-breaking news” are not likely to be reporting at all, but they are often pushed by rage merchants wrapping an interpretation around a YouTube video accompanied by lightning bolt emojis and strings of exclamation points. Reliable reporters need time to establish what happened. Rage merchants don’t. The con artist and the propagandist feed on the impatient. Your greatest information literacy superpower is learning to wait.

If there are legs to the video, rest assured you’re not the only one viewing it. There are many people, some of whom have mastered advanced techniques of video analysis, who are likely already analyzing it and trying to get to the bottom of it.

You won’t have to wait long to learn what they’ve found.

Sam Wineburg, Professor of Education and (by courtesy) History, Stanford University and Michael Caulfield, Research Scientist, Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington

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

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I hope you found this of interest. We live in many ways in a really strange world; I am talking about the digital world, of course.

We want them to live forever!

Here’s an anti-aging project that we all wish for a successful outcome.

Despite the fact that one of the very important items that we learn from dogs is the certainty of death, there is not a single dog carer who doesn’t want them to live much longer lives.

Today’s post is the republication of a recent science report over on Mother Nature Network concerning a drug, rapamycin, that is hoped may give our wonderful dogs several more healthy years of life. As always, republished within the generous terms of MNN.

We wish the scientists much luck in achieving this outcome, without any deleterious side effects.

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Anti-aging project aims to extend dogs’ life spans

Researchers hope a drug called rapamycin can give dogs several more healthy years of life.
By: Russell McLendon, December 4, 2015,

Although some dogs have lived as long as 29 years, canine life spans are typically closer to half that length. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Although some dogs have lived as long as 29 years, canine life spans are typically closer to half that length. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Living with a dog can help humans in lots of ways, from reducing stress and anxiety to lifting our spirits and making us laugh. Yet despite the abundance of benefits dogs offer, they also come with a notable drawback: Their life spans are much shorter than ours, forcing us to deal with the sadness of their deaths every 15 years or so.

Grieving for our dogs is just part of life, and in the big picture, it’s a small price to pay. But according to researchers at the University of Washington (UW), there may be a way to help our best friends stay with us — and stay healthy — a little longer.

Dog aging varies widely by size and breed, with smaller dogs typically maturing more quickly, yet also living a few years longer on average. It’s also common for mutts to outlive purebred dogs, thanks to the perks of higher genetic diversity. But while almost any dog is considered elderly by age 15, some have been known to nearly double their expected life spans — including Bluey, an Australian cattle dog who famously lived to see his 29th birthday last century.

And now researchers at UW’s Dog Aging Project (DAP) are working to bring similar longevity to canines of all kinds. In addition to performing “the first nationwide, large-scale longitudinal study of aging in pet dogs,” this project involves efforts to improve dogs’ “healthy life span” via therapies that already work in lab settings.

“To be clear, our goal is to extend the period of life in which dogs are healthy, not prolong the already difficult older years,” the project’s website explains. “Imagine what you could do with an additional two to five years with your beloved pet in the prime of his or her life. This is within our reach today.”

If it pans out, this may also aid ongoing research into extending the lives of other animals, including humans. But for now, the therapy is focused on dogs.

Researchers think rapamycin might increase a dog's healthy life span by up to 5 years. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Researchers think rapamycin might increase a dog’s healthy life span by up to 5 years. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Namely, they’re testing the FDA-approved drug rapamycin (aka sirolimus) on middle-aged dogs. High doses of rapamycin are already used in humans to fight cancer and prevent organ-transplant rejection, but at low doses, it has also been shown to slow aging and extend life span in several animals with few or no side effects. In mice, for example, the immunosuppressant can lengthen lives by up to 25 percent.

“If rapamycin has a similar effect in dogs — and it’s important to keep in mind we don’t know this yet — then a typical large dog could live 2 to 3 years longer, and a smaller dog might live 4 years longer,” the project’s organizers write. “More important than the extra years, however, is the improvement in overall health during aging that we expect rapamycin to provide.”

Rapamycin trials have already begun on 32 middle-aged golden retrievers, Labrador retrievers and German shepherds. Ranging from 6 to 9 years old, these dogs will spend several months on a low-dose rapamycin regimen in which researchers study age-related metrics like heart function, immune response, physical activity, body weight and cognitive measures. They’ll also follow these 32 dogs throughout the rest of their lives, looking for any significant changes in aging or life span.

And in phase two of the study, a second group of middle-aged dogs will enter a longer-term, low-dose rapamycin regimen “designed to optimize lifespan extension.” Based on mouse studies conducted both at UW and elsewhere, they anticipate the drug “could increase healthy lifespan of middle-aged dogs by 2-5 years or more.”

Rapamycin isn’t a miracle drug, however, and high doses have been linked to side effects like immune suppression and delayed wound healing. But as the DAP website argues, “these are greatly mitigated at the doses used to extend longevity, and both animal and human studies indicate that even mild adverse events are rare.”

Regular exercise and outdoor time are great ways to boost a dog's quality of life. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Regular exercise and outdoor time are great ways to boost a dog’s quality of life. (Photo: Shutterstock)

While the idea of extending dogs’ lives is exciting, it’s important not to let quantity of life overshadow quality of life. We may never have full control over how long our dogs live, but we can make sure they live well while they’re here.

A good reminder of this comes from Pegasus, a Great Dane rescued from unscrupulous breeders in South Africa when she was 4 weeks old. Suffering from a pigment deficiency often associated with blindness and deafness, Pegasus wasn’t expected to live very long. Filmmaker Dave Meinert adopted her anyway, and decided to film her daily as she grew up. In May 2015, he released a time-lapse movie (see below) of her reaching adulthood that quickly went viral. And as he explains in the video, Pegasus’ prognosis only helped the pair live every day like it was their last.

“I still don’t know how long she is going to live,” Meinert admits. “But right now is pretty great.”

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Watching the video offers the most beautiful, and powerful, reminder of the unconditional love that we can share with our dogs! What a gift they give us!

Wouldn’t we all love a few more years of happy and healthy life for our beloved dogs.