{"id":2564,"date":"2022-01-26T20:13:40","date_gmt":"2022-01-26T19:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2022\/01\/26\/facebook-versus-the-bmj-when-fact-checking-goes-wrong-the-bmj\/"},"modified":"2022-01-26T20:13:40","modified_gmt":"2022-01-26T19:13:40","slug":"facebook-versus-the-bmj-when-fact-checking-goes-wrong-the-bmj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2022\/01\/26\/facebook-versus-the-bmj-when-fact-checking-goes-wrong-the-bmj\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook versus the BMJ: when fact checking goes wrong &#8211; The BMJ"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cfbc967f0983488262956e73eca9483a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3859091246952232\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- blok -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3859091246952232\" data-ad-slot=\"1334354390\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n\n<\/div>\n<p>Intended for healthcare professionals<br \/><em>The BMJ<\/em> has locked horns with Facebook and the gatekeepers of international fact checking after one of its investigations was wrongly labelled with \u201cmissing context\u201d and censored on the world\u2019s largest social network. <strong>Rebecca Coombes<\/strong> and <strong>Madlen Davies<\/strong> report<br \/>On 3 November Howard Kaplan, a retired dentist from Israel, posted a link to a <em>BMJ<\/em> investigation article in a private Facebook group.<a id=\"xref-ref-1-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-1\">1<\/a> The investigation reported poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia, a contract research company helping to carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial.<a id=\"xref-ref-2-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-2\">2<\/a><br \/>The article brought in record traffic to bmj.com and was widely shared on Twitter, helping it achieve the second highest \u201cAltmetric\u201d score of all time across all biomedical publications.<a id=\"xref-ref-3-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-3\">3<\/a> But a week after his posting Kaplan woke up to a message from Facebook (<a id=\"xref-fig-1-1\" class=\"xref-fig\" href=\"#F1\">fig 1<\/a>).<br \/>Clockwise from top left: Facebook\u2019s \u201cmissing context\u201d notice; administrators of a private group were warned of a \u201cpartly false\u201d post; Facebook\u2019s warning on Howard Kaplan\u2019s original post; Cochrane\u2019s tweet after being \u201cshadowbanned\u201d by Instagram<br \/>\u201cThe Facebook Thought Police has issued me a dire warning,\u201d he wrote in a new post. \u201cFacebook\u2019s \u2018independent fact-checker\u2019 doesn\u2019t like the wording of the article by the BMJ. And if I don\u2019t delete my post, they are threatening to make my posts less visible. Obviously, I will not delete my post . . . If it seems like I\u2019ve disappeared for a while, you\u2019ll know why.\u201d<a id=\"xref-ref-4-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-4\">4<\/a><br \/>Kaplan was not the only Facebook user having problems. Soon, several <em>BMJ<\/em> readers were alerting the journal to Facebook\u2019s censorship. Over the past two months the journal\u2019s editorial staff have been navigating the opaque appeals process without success, and still today their investigation remains obscured on Facebook.<br \/>The experience has highlighted serious concerns about the \u201cfact checking\u201d being undertaken by third party providers on behalf of Facebook, specifically the lack of accountability and oversight of their actions, and the resulting censorship of information.<br \/>Beginning on 10 November, <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s readers began reporting a variety of problems when trying to share its investigation on Facebook. Some reported being unable to share it. Many others reported having their post flagged with a warning about \u201cMissing context . . . Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.\u201d Facebook told posters that people who repeatedly shared \u201cfalse information\u201d might have their posts moved lower in its news feed. In one private Facebook group, of people who had long term neurological adverse events after vaccination, group administrators received a message from Facebook informing them that a post linking to <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s investigation was \u201cpartly false\u201d (<a id=\"xref-fig-1-2\" class=\"xref-fig\" href=\"#F1\">fig 1<\/a>).<br \/>Readers were directed to a \u201cfact check\u201d performed by Lead Stories,<a id=\"xref-ref-5-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-5\">5<\/a> one of the 10 companies contracted by Facebook in the US,<a id=\"xref-ref-6-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-6\">6<\/a> whose tagline is \u201cdebunking fake news as it happens.\u201d An analysis last year showed that Lead Stories was responsible for half of all Facebook fact checks.<a id=\"xref-ref-7-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-7\">7<\/a><br \/>The Lead Stories article said that none of the flaws identified by <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s whistleblower, Brook Jackson, would \u201cdisqualify\u201d the data collected from the main Pfizer vaccine trial. Quoting a Pfizer spokesperson, it said that the drug company had reviewed Jackson\u2019s concerns and taken \u201cactions to correct and remediate\u201d where necessary. A Pfizer spokesperson said that the company\u2019s investigation \u201cdid not identify any issues or concerns that would invalidate the data or jeopardize the integrity of the study.\u201d Lead Stories also said that Jackson did not \u201cexpress unreserved support for covid vaccines\u201d and had worked at the trial site for only two weeks.<br \/>The Lead Stories article, though it failed to identify any errors in <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s investigation, nevertheless carried the title, \u201cFact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying and Ignored Reports of Flaws in Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials.\u201d<br \/>The first paragraph wrongly described <em>The BMJ<\/em> as a \u201cnews blog\u201d and was accompanied by a screenshot of the investigation article with a stamp over it stating \u201cFlaws Reviewed,\u201d despite the Lead Stories article not identifying anything false or inaccurate. Lead Stories did not mention that the investigation was externally peer reviewed, despite this being stated in the article, and had published its article under a URL that contained the phrase \u201choax-alert.\u201d<a id=\"xref-ref-5-2\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-5\">5<\/a><br \/><em>The BMJ<\/em> contacted Lead Stories, asking it to remove its article. It declined. The author of the article, Dean Miller, replied to say that Lead Stories was not responsible for Facebook\u2019s actions.<br \/>\u201cIn the Facebook system, we flagged the article \u201cMissing Context,\u201d which is the lowest possible flagging category,\u201d says Miller. \u201cIt\u2019s my understanding Facebook Enforcement doesn\u2019t throttle back distribution or traffic based on a \u2018Missing Context\u2019 rating. I may be wrong, but I believe the result is merely a flag on the content.\u201d<br \/>Miller defended his article, noting, \u201cWe did not call into question the integrity of <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s story, only the comprehensiveness of it. That\u2019s the point of a \u2018Missing Context\u2019 rating.<br \/>\u201cWe couldn\u2019t agree more with you the public should be concerned, provided they have all the context, which is what we attempted to point out and, in some small way, provide as a supplement to <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s report.\u201d<br \/><em>The BMJ<\/em> based its story on dozens of original documents provided by the experienced clinical trial auditor turned whistleblower Jackson and was confident in the authenticity of her evidence. After publication, and as reported in a linked rapid response on bmj.com, <em>The BMJ<\/em> contacted Ventavia, Pfizer, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to better clarify the scope and implications of the problems identified at Ventavia and what corrective measures had been taken.<a id=\"xref-ref-8-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-8\">8<\/a> At the time of going to press Ventavia had not responded to <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s repeated requests for information.<br \/>Pfizer told <em>The BMJ<\/em> that it had investigated an anonymous complaint about Ventavia in September 2020 and that \u201cactions were taken to correct and remediate where necessary.\u201d The FDA stated that it was unable to answer <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s questions, \u201cas it is an ongoing matter.\u201d<br \/>In a subsequent email, Alan Duke, editor in chief of Lead Stories, told <em>The BMJ<\/em> that the \u201cMissing Context\u201d label was created by Facebook specifically \u201cto deal with content that could mislead without additional context but which was otherwise true or real.\u201d He added that the article was widely being shared and commented on by antivaccine activists on Facebook. \u201cWe agree that sometimes Facebook\u2019s messaging about the fact checking labels can sound overly aggressive and scary. If you have an issue with their messaging you should indeed take it up with them as we are unable to change any of it.\u201d<br \/><em>The BMJ<\/em> also contacted the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), run by the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit journalism school in St Petersburg, Florida, whose donors include Facebook and Google.<a id=\"xref-ref-9-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-9\">9<\/a> IFCN sets quality standards for fact checking organisations and creates a verified list of companies that meet these standards, including Lead Stories. Poynter referred <em>The BMJ<\/em> back to Facebook.<br \/>Gary Schwitzer, adjunct associate professor at the University of Minnesota\u2019s School of Public Health and publisher of HealthNewsReview, which grades US news organisations\u2019 health reporting, said there was an \u201cinherent conflict of interest\u201d in Facebook\u2019s use of third party organisations to fact check content. \u201cSo a company facing a credibility crisis hires you to help them out,\u201d he told <em>The BMJ<\/em>. \u201cThere is an inherent pressure on the contractor, then, if they want to be paid, to come up with problems and to appear to help solve them.\u201d<br \/>He said the processes by which Facebook decided which content to send for fact checking, and the contractors\u2019 systems for deciding which pieces they reviewed, were not transparent or consistent enough. A supposedly objective \u201cfact check\u201d in reality was \u201csubject to individual reviewer opinion,\u201d he added. Fact checkers often miss genuinely misleading stories, such as articles reporting relative rather than absolute risk, said Schwitzer.<br \/>Cochrane, the international provider of high quality systematic reviews of medical evidence, has experienced similar treatment by Instagram, which, like Facebook, is owned by the parent company Meta.<br \/>A Cochrane spokesperson said that in October its Instagram account was \u201cshadowbanned\u201d for two weeks, meaning that \u201cwhen other users tried to tag Cochrane, a message popped up saying @cochraneorg had posted material that goes against \u2018false content\u2019 guidelines\u201d (<a id=\"xref-fig-1-3\" class=\"xref-fig\" href=\"#F1\">fig 1<\/a>). Shadowbanning may lead to posts, comments, or activities being hidden or obscured and stop appearing in searches.<br \/>After Cochrane posted on Instagram and Twitter about the ban, its usual service was eventually restored, although it has not received an explanation for why it fell foul of the guidelines in the first place.<br \/>The spokesperson said, \u201cWe think Cochrane was reported as it had published a review on ivermectin and was ironically supporting a campaign about spreading misinformation. It seems sometimes automation and artificial intelligence get it wrong. And user reporting and mechanisms can be used to block the wrong people.\u201d<br \/>In December <em>The BMJ<\/em> wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Meta\u2019s chief executive.<a id=\"xref-ref-10-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-10\">10<\/a> In the letter, editors Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi called Lead Stories\u2019 fact checking \u201cinaccurate, incompetent, and irresponsible.\u201d It asked Meta to review the warning placed on <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s article and the processes that led to it being added and to reconsider its overall approach to fact checking.<br \/>Meta directed <em>The BMJ<\/em> to its advice page, which said that publishers can appeal a rating directly with the relevant fact checking organisation within a week of being notified of it. \u201cFact checkers are responsible for reviewing content and applying ratings, and this process is independent from Meta,\u201d it said. This means that, as in <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s case, if the fact checking organisation declines to change a rating after an appeal from a publisher, the publisher has little recourse.<br \/>The lack of an independent appeals process raises concerns, given that fact checking organisations have been accused of bias. \u201cI worry about the amount of power placed in the hands of these third party groups,\u201d says Jillian York, director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit organisation that promotes civil liberties in the digital world. \u201cThere\u2019s no accountability structure. There\u2019s no democratic process to this. And so, while I do see a role for fact checking and think it\u2019s far superior to the alternative\u2014which is Facebook just taking down content\u2014I still worry about the effect that it can have on legitimate sources.\u201d<br \/>In December Lead Stories wrote a response to <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s open letter to Mark Zuckerberg that implied that whistleblower Jackson was not a credible source.<a id=\"xref-ref-11-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-11\">11<\/a><br \/>It said Jackson was not a \u201clab-coated scientist\u201d and that her qualifications amounted to a \u201c30-hour certification in auditing techniques.\u201d Jackson has more than 15 years\u2019 experience in clinical research coordination and management and previously held a position as director of operations. \u201cI\u2019ve never claimed to be a scientist,\u201d she says. \u201cThe 30 hour course is not what qualifies me. All my years of having different roles in clinical trials is what qualifies me. Besides, someone new to clinical research would have noticed what was going on at Ventavia. It did not take an expert.\u201d<br \/>Lead Stories also criticised <em>The BMJ<\/em> for failing to include Jackson\u2019s \u201cpublicly expressed views of covid vaccines.\u201d It pointed to tweets she had sent, all after <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s investigation. One criticised an episode in the children\u2019s television show <em>Sesame Street<\/em> in which Big Bird gets a covid vaccine, and another expressed support for a US court ruling against making vaccination mandatory for federal employees. Lead Stories had highlighted the same tweets in its original fact check, saying that \u201con Twitter, Jackson does not express unreserved support for covid vaccines.\u201d<br \/>\u201cSince when is it the obligation of any citizen to show unreserved support for anything?\u201d asked Schwitzer. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely immaterial to the topic at hand. For it to be in this independent review I think says more about the reviewer than the reviewee.\u201d<br \/>Lead Stories is taking an editorial position on vaccination, York says, one that echoes Facebook\u2019s own position. \u201cThe broader issue at hand is that companies like Facebook and some of the traditional media establishments are reasonably concerned about vaccine misinformation but have swung so far in the opposite direction as to potentially shut down legitimate questions about major corporations like Pfizer,\u201d she said. The medical industry has a history of suppressing certain information, and citizens need to be able to question it, she added.<br \/>On 20 December Lead Stories also sent a series of inflammatory tweets after publishing its response to <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s open letter.<a id=\"xref-ref-11-2\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-11\">11<\/a> It said, \u201cHey @bmj_latest, when your articles are literally being republished by a website run by someone in the \u2018Disinformation Dozen\u2019 perhaps you should be reviewing your editorial policies instead of writing open letters.\u201d<a id=\"xref-ref-12-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-12\">12<\/a><br \/>The tweet contained a picture of <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s article, which had been republished by Children\u2019s Health Defense, an antivaccine website that questions the safety of vaccines and funds antivaccine adverts on Facebook. Lead Stories also asked questions about Paul Thacker, the author of <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s investigation and cited as such in the reposted article on the Children\u2019s Health Defense website. Lead Stories tweeted, \u201cIs @thackerpd really ok with being listed as an author on childrenshealthdefense.org? Or does he object to it? The answer will reveal a lot.\u201d<br \/>Thacker did not write the piece for Children\u2019s Health Defense. The website had republished articles of <em>The BMJ<\/em> without complying with its licence terms. <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s legal team has asked the Children\u2019s Health Defense to take the articles down.<br \/>Fact checking is not a completely unregulated business. IFCN was set up in 2015 to advocate \u201cfor higher standards among the global fact-checking community.\u201d<a id=\"xref-ref-13-1\" class=\"xref-bibr\" href=\"#ref-13\">13<\/a> More than 100 fact checking agencies from around the world are signed up to IFCN\u2019s code of principles and are verified by it. Signatories range from what the IFCN calls the \u201cbig beasts of traditional media,\u201d such as <em>Le Monde<\/em>\u2019s Les Decodeurs in France and the <em>Washington Post<\/em> in the US, to global newswires AFP, AP, and Reuters, and start-ups such as Rappler in the Philippines.<br \/>The code\u2019s first principle is a commitment to non-partisanship. \u201cSignatories do not advocate or take policy positions on the issues they fact check,\u201d it says. <em>The BMJ<\/em> has submitted a complaint to the Poynter Institute, which runs the IFCN, alleging that Lead Stories\u2019 conduct does not meet this commitment and is awaiting a response.<br \/><em>The BMJ<\/em> plans to appeal to Facebook\u2019s Oversight Board, an independent panel of 20 people from around the world that can decide whether Facebook should allow or remove specific content. It reviews only a small number of \u201cemblematic cases,\u201d including upholding a decision made on 7 January 2021 to ban the then US president, Donald Trump, from posting on Facebook and Instagram after the storming of the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, in which five people died. The board\u2019s decisions are binding unless implementing them could violate the law.<br \/>Carolina Are, an online moderation researcher and visiting lecturer at City University in London, backs <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s efforts. \u201c<em>The BMJ<\/em> is a reputable news organisation that has a huge platform and the means to challenge this stuff. But there are a variety of creators on social media and online in general who just get their profiles outright deleted when this stuff happens,\u201d she says.<br \/>Meanwhile, readers are still facing problems sharing <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s investigation on Facebook.<br \/>Kamran Abbasi, <em>The BMJ<\/em>\u2019s editor in chief, said, \u201cWe should all be very worried that Facebook, a multibillion dollar company, is effectively censoring fully fact checked journalism that is raising legitimate concerns about the conduct of clinical trials. Facebook\u2019s actions won\u2019t stop <em>The BMJ<\/em> doing what is right, but the real question is: why is Facebook acting in this way? What is driving its world view? Is it ideology? Is it commercial interests? Is it incompetence? Users should be worried that, despite presenting itself as a neutral social media platform, Facebook is trying to control how people think under the guise of \u2018fact checking.\u2019\u201d<br \/>Competing interests: See <a href=\"http:\/\/bmj.com\/about-bmj\/editorial-staff\">bmj.com\/about-bmj\/editorial-staff<\/a>.<br \/>Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally reviewed.<br \/><i class=\"bmj-icon fa fa-edit\"><\/i><a href=\"\/content\/376\/bmj.o95\/submit-a-rapid-response\">Respond to this article<\/a><br \/><a class=\"btn register-button\" href=\"\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/376\/bmj.o95?tab=article-alert&amp;itemId=pr1906\">Register for alerts<\/a> <\/p>\n<div class=\"alerts-email\"><i class=\"fa fa-info-circle\"><\/i> If you have registered for alerts, you should use your registered email address as your username<\/div>\n<p>If you are unable to import citations, please contact   technical support for your product directly (links go to external sites):<br \/>Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about The BMJ.<br \/>NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.<br \/>         This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.      <br \/><a data-target=\"crossmark\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/crossmark-cdn.crossref.org\/widget\/v2.0\/logos\/CROSSMARK_Color_horizontal.svg\" width=\"150\" \/><\/a><br \/><a class=\"anchor\" id=\"this-weeks-poll\"><\/a><br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/373\/bmj.n1036\">Read<\/a> related article<br \/><a href=\"\/about-bmj\/poll-archive\">See<\/a> previous polls<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/376\/bmj.o95\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Intended for healthcare professionalsThe BMJ has locked horns with Facebook and the gatekeepers of international fact checking after one of its investigations was wrongly labelled with \u201cmissing context\u201d and censored on the world\u2019s largest social network. Rebecca Coombes and Madlen Davies reportOn 3 November Howard Kaplan, a retired dentist from Israel, posted a link to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow1sXXCw:productID":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}