Finding Information Sources You Can Trust

There are many ways to tell if a source is worthy of your time and trust and plenty of red flags that signal they are not. 

Let's start with Red Flags: 

• They use fear - to get you to tune in, to keep watching and to drive your reactions and behavior.
• They rely heavily on experts and tell you that there is "consensus". Really?
• They tell you the "Science is Settled". The words "Science" and "Settled" actually don't go together even though we've become accustomed to it.
• They don't invite you to check their work.
• In fact, they discourage you from doing your own research while trying to make it sound reasonable. 
• They have conflicts of interest: aka Follow The Money! 
• They lie (I know - duh!)

​

This one makes me laugh every time - it's LITERALLY a stock photo with "measles"... only it doesn't even look like measles! Ha! Maybe that's why "anti-vaxxers think they know better than experts!!

On the other hand sources that you can trust do the opposite:

• They aim to present facts, data, and events as impartially as possible. They may be scary but...
• But they present many different sources of information and present different perspectives.
• They understand what Science is: namely a process that is carried out by imperfect humans. Therefore the process must be examined and questioned. 
• ​They invite you to check their work. 
• In fact, they often use these exact words: "Do your own research. Don't just take my word for it."
• They are open about their funding, many are funded by viewers, not companies
• When they make errors they admit them publicly. 

Do you have sources that fit these criteria? One person that came onto my radar in 2019 is RFK Jr. He was supposed to participate in a debate during the 2019 measles "blow up" (I'll leave it up to you to interpret that phrase!) The whole panel from Yale canceled on him (Yale Bailed) so instead he spoke to a group of people that came to watch. You can watch that video here. In that talk he spoke about the Gardasil vaccine and some astounding (not in a good way) parts of the safety study design. He invited everyone of us there to check what he was saying. So I did. And he was right. I wrote a blogpost about it here. Ever since then I've paid close attention to what RFK Jr has to say. He's extremely intelligent and has an incredible grasp of history, law, science and politics. 

---

A second source of information that has been invaluable to me is The HighWire and Del Bigtree. Del is fearless in tackling controversial topics and does extremely thorough interviews. He asks tough questions but remains respectful and he doesn't always 100% agree with the people he interviews. Last year during lockdowns I was very impressed because The HighWire always reported on crucial new information 2 weeks to a month before any corporate news source did. Here is a segment about that called, "Ahead of the Curve". The HighWire gets into scientific studies, breaks them down, brings in a myriad of experts, scientists and doctors and provides the links to all of their sources. 

One thing I learned last year is that there are innumerable good, honest and extremely intelligent people on our planet. That is amazing! So many people are speaking up and trying to get through to the general public - Science is NOT settled and there are many different theories and ideas out there about what is going on in the world. The most humble admit that they don't know all the answers. I'm not talking about the following: "I ordered you to do something last week and now I'm ordering you to do something different this week because the Science changed and I was wrong." I'm talking about honest-to-God humility that invites questions and mistakes and gives recommendations not orders. 

Because of the plethora of people sharing information, the supply we have access to is literally endless. Recently I have settled on a couple of sources to check in with. Because if we're not careful we can get in "Seek mode" which looks like this: seek, seek, seek and seek some more. In Seek Mode we always want more. Our need for more information is practically insatiable! While this may be beneficial for some people (for example: researchers!), for many of us getting in Seek Mode for extended periods is disruptive and not our healthiest state. I encourage people to find 1-3 sources to check in with regularly if you feel like you need updates. 

I hope this was helpful! Please let me know what I missed - this is not by any means a comprehensive list. It is what comes to my mind when I think of what sources I trust and don't trust. 

What are your favorite sources of information? Why do you trust them? Have you ever been in Seek Mode? Please let us know in the comments!