Computational Fact Checking from Knowledge Networks

Traditional fact checking by expert journalists cannot keep up with the enormous volume of information that is now generated online. Computational fact checking may significantly enhance our ability to evaluate the veracity of dubious information. Here we show that the complexities of human fact checking can be approximated quite well by finding the shortest path between concept nodes under properly defined semantic proximity metrics on knowledge graphs. Framed as a network problem this approach is feasible with efficient computational techniques. We evaluate this approach by examining tens of thousands of claims related to history, entertainment, geography, and biographical information using a public knowledge graph extracted from Wikipedia. Statements independently known to be true consistently receive higher support via our method than do false ones. These findings represent a significant step toward scalable computational fact-checking methods that may one day mitigate the spread of harmful misinformation.     

Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and Its Transformations: Critical Anthropological Perspectives.

Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and Its Transformations: Critical Anthropological Perspectives. Roy Ellen. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000. 356 pp.     

Anthropological Knowledge and Native American Cultural Practice in the Liberal Polity

U.S. Indian policy is caught between two incommensurable theories or paradigms. First, liberal theory extended the worldviewof early physical science to understand human nature. Providing the conceptual foundation for liberal polities, it largely underwrote U.S. Indian policy into the mid-20th century. Liberal theory recently has been superceded, as theory , by anthropological culture theory, which better accounts for variations between peoples and the realities of human life. The advent of culture theory marks a major paradigm shift within science and public consciousness. Liberal theory, however, remains the foundation for the powerful ideology of liberalism and the institutional practices of Western capitalism and democracy. Thus arise uncomfortable disjunctions—first, between incommensurable theories that both remain vital forces in public life, and, secondarily, between knowledge and practice. This article explores these contending theoretical formations, disjunctions between them, and illustrates how these disjunctions translate into contemporary argument in U.S. Indian policy.     

Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge

Naked Science: Anthropological Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge. Laura Nader. ed. New York: Routledge, 1996.318 pp.     

Points of View: Combining Local and Scientific Knowledge

A change in attitude is urgently required to provide credibility to, and to devise methods for, combining and utilizing non-scientific information (local knowledge) together with more typical scientific data. In the midst of vast uncertainty about fish stocks, the climate is right for this change in attitude. Expert systems offer one tool to combine different sources of information in a meaningful way. We believe that through the simple communication required to gather knowledge for an expert system, the development of mutual respect will foster cooperation and responsibility of resource users, scientists and managers, thus providing the basis for improved and more responsible management.