Internet research. How to do it effectively?

Pete Tar

Senior Member.
Please give your personal tips on how to effectively use search to track down a relevant piece of inormation.
What are the useful google search boolean terms (I dont even know if that's the right word? You know, the codes you use).
What are the best picture sourcing methods?
How do I find the original of something?
If I find useful information relative to something but it is on a site that also has what I would consider bunk (eg, man-made global warming denial, poorly researched anti-vaccine claims), is it still 'safe' to use if it is the only source? (eg, Mick your debunking of the Libor/aurora quote was from a website that is AGW skeptic).

How do I analyse the editing history of a wikipedia page? What is the best way to use wikipedia?
how do I use the internet wayback machine?
Any other resources I should know of?

Thanks.
 
What are the useful google search boolean terms (I dont even know if that's the right word? You know, the codes you use).

I only use the - operator (i.e. the minus sign "-") to exclude terms, and the " (quotes) to group terms. The skill to finding things is to get the right combination to narrow things things down.

I quote often will copy a long chunk, like ten words or more, and try it in quotes, like:

"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."
https://www.google.com/search?q="In+politics%2C+nothing+happens+by+accident.+If+it+happens%2C+you+can+bet+it+was+planned+that+way."

Then an example of excluding terms:
"In politics, nothing happens by accident" -fdr -roosevelt
https://www.google.com/search?q="In+politics%2C+nothing+happens+by+accident"+-fdr+-roosevelt

I also often will restrict seraches to a site, or to a domain, with terms like:

site:cdc.gov
site:.gov
site:.mil

geoengineering site:.mil
https://www.google.com/search?q=geoengineering+site:.mil

For checking when something first came up I use Google Groups, and Google Books, and google news archive

https://news.google.com/news/advanced_news_search?as_drrb=a

Google Books is great for searching for the earliest data a quote was used, and also finding early instances of various topics, like persistent contrails.
 
If I find useful information relative to something but it is on a site that also has what I would consider bunk (eg, man-made global warming denial, poorly researched anti-vaccine claims), is it still 'safe' to use if it is the only source? (eg, Mick your debunking of the Libor/aurora quote was from a website that is AGW skeptic).

It would be better if you can use something like Wikipedia, and then preferable several sites. It kind of depends on what is being said. If it's just pointing something out - like there being no actual evidence of a LIBOR connection - then it's reasonable to quote it, or you could just paraphrase it. I just did that post rather quickly - but the bottom line there is that there's no actual evidence of a connection, but there's been no "oficial denials", so there's not a lot of repute you can quote.

But yeah, choose the most reputable source you can, and don't just repeat claims. I essentially verified the claim by not being able to find the evidence myself, but that's a little weak.
 
How do I analyse the editing history of a wikipedia page? What is the best way to use wikipedia?

I don't do much beyond clicking on "history", and the "prev" link for each change will tell you how it differs from the previous link. I think there are better tools, but I've not used any.

Wikipedia is fine for quoting on uncontroversial topics, like ice supersaturation. But it's best to see if you can quote the multiple original sources as well.
 
how do I use the internet wayback machine?

http://archive.org/

Enter the url and then "Take me Back". You will get a calendar with blue dots for each time the page was stored (might not actually have changed), and a timeline at the top. Click on one, then you'll get the old page and navigation controls at the top. Sometimes a page is not available, try a different date.

Usually the oldest is the most useful, but sometimes it's useful click through until you see a change. You can use the URL to link directly to an old version of a page.

Be aware that the owner of a domain CAN remove all the old entries from archive.org, so if you find something interesting, make a copy.
 
Another useful tool is "WhoIs", which comes in many forms, but you can just use on the web to look up who owns a domain and when it was created:

http://www.whois.com/whois/funvax.com

Domain Name.......... funvax.com
Creation Date........ 2011-04-03
Registration Date.... 2011-04-03
Expiry Date.......... 2013-04-03
Organisation Name.... Ryan Harper

Reverse IP lookups are also useful, to see what sites are on the same IP:

http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server/


If you get a large number of results that means it's on a shared IP address, and is low budget. A few related sites means its a dedicated server.
 
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great stuff thanks.

I have a person I want to check up on. Gene Rosen, said to be a retired psychologist, sheltered kids at the Sandy Hook massacre.
Some real ...POS... on ATS has said he finds him to be 'unconvincing' as an ex-psychologist, and is basically calling his integrity and version of events into question based on that.
What do I use to search for proof on this person being what he says?
Thanks.

Edit..Tried google search gene+rosen+phd, excluded recent reports, but nothing...
 
I searched for doctor review which led me to healthgrades.com, searched for gene rosen conneticut

http://www.healthgrades.com/provide...e=provider&loc=conneticut&locIsSolrCity=false

Gave third result:
Joanna L. Rosen, PSY

Psychology
1 Washington Ave Suite 4, Sandy Hook, CT 06482 (1 more)
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Possible daughter? Unlikely to be that many Rosen name psychologists in Sandy Hook, and careers run in families.

excluding enough terms:

"gene rosen" "sandy hook" -shooting -hero -feeding

http://genespetservice.com/pages/about.html
also dating back to 2004, so he's been retired at least eight years.
http://web.archive.org/web/20040309143227/http://www.genespetservice.com/pages/about.html
Gene Rosen, a resident of Sandy Hook, CT for the past twenty years, is a retired psychologist who worked for several years in Newtown at Fairfield Hills State Hospital.
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Same thing in many business directories
 
Brilliant.

(really, that was so satisying to be able to do. I'm actually a bit emotional. Thank you)


edit.. I got post-banned by using the same words he did to question the credibility of the psychologist, to question his credibility as a human being...
The facts made no difference to him anyway.
Oh well.
I need to stop going there.
 
More detail on my thought process: The filtering out was the key there. You want to find out about "gene rosen" in "sandy hook". So I start with:

"gene rosen" "sandy hook"
Which gives lots of stories about the shooting:


So I quickly pick a word to filter, "shooting"


You want to filter words that are as specific to the story as possible. I pick hero, no so much from the results, but just knowing about the story.


So then I see there are lot of stories with the same phrase "just finished feeding his cats", so I filter based on the least common word there "feeding", although I could have done -"feeding his cats" if there were no uncommon words. This gives us several results about Gene's Trusty Pet Care, which I then verified was real by looking at the earliest version on archive.org.
 
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With Wikipedia you can view the (state of) the page at any point in history, as well as the differences.

On any page, click View History at the top of the page: you will see all the edits backwards in time (who made it etc.)

On the left of each edit line is (cur | prev), with no cur for the most-recent edit and no prev for the original.

Consider some edit (cur | prev) 14:44, 17 September 2013 ...

  • If you click cur you will see the differences between the 17 September page and today, after which today's page is shown. So the older the edit the longer the diff list. Note that the list show all differences from 17 Sept to today.
  • If you click prev you will see the differences between the 17 September page and the page just before that, after which the full page as on 17 September is shown. The diff list will always be smallish in this case.
Registered editors are identified by user name while anonymous edits are identified by IP number. Motivations and arguments appear in the comments.
 
Some more tools on wikipedia:
on the left (depends on layout you use) of a page, you have

Navigation
Interaction
Toolbox

What links here: all articles linking to the page
Page information: has some info that may be useful, nr of edits, nr of distinct authors and "Number of page watchers": high number of watchers may indicate it's popular, controversial, often vandalised, edit warring.. (watchlist on wiki is the same as watched threads here)

At the bottom of "page information", you have

External tools

Revision history search: links to WikiBlame, a tool to search the history of a page for the editor who added a specific piece of text.
Contributers and User Edits: link to toolserver.org, but seems to have problems at the moment..
Page view statistics: 30, 60 or 90 day page view statistics, at any date in the past (up to dec 2007 it seems)

Those pages/tools are also available via the edit history that qed explained in the previous post: on top of the page, you have:


External tools: Revision history statistics · Revision history search · Contributors · User edits · Number of watchers · Page view statistics


On the wikipedia tools page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools (can also be reached by typing wp:tools in the wikipedia search), you get quite a long list of tools, among those for page histories, there are a few that can be useful for analysing editor activity. When you think someone is pushing pseudoscience or CTs, or editors working in team...:

Contributor edit counts and analysis:
  • userhist – user script, adds interface elements for isolating a user's changes to a page.
  • Contributors – lists edits, similar to page history, but can be sorted by contributor; easy to exclude different groups
  • User contribution search – finds all the edits by a user to a single page
  • Page history statistics by user:aka – builds an edit history overview page
  • Intersect Contribs – compares the edits of two editors in any Wikimedia Foundation wiki to see which articles overlap
  • Wikistalk – similar to Intersect Contribs, allows comparisons between more than two users and namespace selection, works only on the English Wikipedia
  • Editor Interaction Analyzer, shows the common pages that two editors have both edited, sorted by minimum time between edits by both users. Only works on the English Wikipedia.

All these are really useful only for people quite active on wikipedia or in the politics of wikipedia, to find and repair other "damage" by a bad editor, or to gather evidence for a WP:ANI, get an editor banned, stuff like that..
(btw: these are copied from the cestoda (tapeworm) wikipage, so the links relating to the page will go there, was easier than taking a picture :p)

Google
a few other google tips:
find pages linking to a website or page, example:
debunked link:metabunk.org
(requires at least one searchterm)
find pages/sites similar to one you know:
related:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysorbate gives other pages about polysorbate, related:en.wikipedia.org gives brittanica.com, howstuffworks, planetmath,... (related:meatbunk.org didn't give results..)
search for numbers in a range:
..2000 up to 2000
iphone $150..$400 any value between $150 and $400
1500.. 1500 or higher
 
An interesting read with good points.


[url]http://lifehacker.com/how-to-find-evidence-to-support-any-argument-1454627815[/URL]


Why Learning to "Prove" the False is a Valuable Skill....
Find Good Evidence....
Embrace Google...
Find Studies and Case Law with Google Scholar...
Talk to People Who Can Provide Supporting Information....
Talk to People Who Disagree, but Can See It from Your Perspective....
Avoid Bad Evidence....

Watch Out for Logical Fallacies; They Make Your Argument Less Convincing....
Avoid Carefully Curated Data, It's Almost Always Hiding Something....
Keep the Best Evidence and Leave the Rest Behind...
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I want to share a technique I've used for locating the original sources of stolen astronomical images that have been re-purposed for spreading bunk. This is especially useful in cases where a google image search fails to find the original image, as is common with star field images.

The first tool in this technique is Astrometry.net, which is a very powerful resource. It's at least as important for general astronomical debunking as any search engine. It will astrometrically solve any image that contains stars. The end result is that you will know what the coordinates of the image are, what the field of view is, and you can get the coordinates for any pixel within the image. Unlike most astrometric software that requires you to know the approximate field of view and/or coordinates of the image a priori, astrometry.net can solve an image automatically with no user input. There are limitations, of course; if an image contains very few stars, it will likely not be solvable. The online version (http://nova.astrometry.net/ ) limits you to 10 minutes of CPU time per solution, meaning if it hasn't found the solution in 10 minutes, it gives up.

For wide field images a solution is usually found within seconds. For very narrow fields of view, or for very star dense fields, it can sometimes take more time. The site is also prone to fairly routine down time, which always seems to strike when you need to use it. For those reasons I've downloaded the source code from their website and installed it on my own home PC. The online version will save your results as a webpage you can share, and the "new-fits" file it generates can be opened in a fits viewer to view the coordinates of every single pixel in the image, as well as perform measurements of the angular size of objects in the image. I use SAOds9 as my fits viewer and you can download that here (I find that version 6 is more stable on my PC than version 7):
http://ds9.si.edu/site/Download.html

In some cases, performing the astrometry is enough for the purposes of the debunking; if an image is said to show a certain part of the sky or specific coordinates, often times you will find that stolen images do not even correspond to the claimed coordinates. Other times though it's even possible to use the astrometry to determine precisely when the image was taken, which can then rapidly lead to the discovery of the original source. Just about any time where you have an image that contains one or more real solar system objects, you can figure out when it was taken. Let me show you an example. Donny Gillson claimed this was an image of a "heavy mass object" (Nibiru):

Cropping the lefthand side of the image you can easily solve it with astrometry.net. You find right away that the image is nowhere near "89 Leo" as claimed. But there's more; if you look closely at the left hand side of the image, you'll notice something there that is not in pre-existing sky surveys of the same coordinates, and I don't just mean the photoshopped "crescent planet" (whose phase angle is of course silly as well for being an image that was apparently taken under very dark skies). You can use the astrometrically solved image to download the Digitized Sky Survey (Palomar Sky Survey) image for the same coordinates using SAOds9. This will allow you to see if anything has moved or changed between the images, and in this case there is a comet there on the left hand side of the image. Using SAOds9 to get the comet's coordinates, you can now figure out exactly when the image was taken. You just need to figure out when a comet appeared at those exact coordinates. Precision is important here; although other comets may have come close to that region at various times, it's unlikely for lightning to "strike twice" on the exact same set of coordinates, especially if they're not on the ecliptic. You can also verify that the comet's morphology matches what you see in the image. This technique can also work when a planet or asteroid is in the image. Basically what you need is some solar system object with which to "date" the image. Planets (in wide field images containing stars) and comets work best of course, simply because they're more rare and unique.

In the example we're looking at, I already knew from experience what comet it was likely to be based on the morphology and the location, Andromeda. Whether you have a likely suspect or not, you can confirm what it is by using a planetarium program like Cartes du Ciel or Starry Night. Just set the view for coordinates of the solar system object present in the hoax image, and set the program to rewind time. Eventually your "culprit" will pass through the coordinates. Using this technique I figured out that the above hoax image was originally taken on about September 18, 2010, give or take (according to the hoax it was taken in 2012). The comet was Hartley 2. Now, even if a reverse image search won't work, you can quickly find the real image with google. Just do a date ranged google search for comet Hartley images on or about September 18th give or take a day or two. Very quickly I found the real, original image, here:
http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/2010/09/comet-103phartley-near-pgc-71451.html

And as expected, it did not contain any "Nibiru," despite having been posted years before the hoaxed image. I've used this same technique a few times now, and it is very powerful when conditions permit its use (the presence of a solar system object in the image is necessary).

Again though, even if the image you're dealing with does not have any real solar system objects within it, it can still be very handy. Sometimes an ordinary planetary nebula will be falsely labeled "Nibiru." You can quickly debunk that and correctly identify any such nebulae with astrometry.net. You can also use the resulting astrometric solution to download Palomar Sky Survey images of the same coordinates for comparison and show that the star or nebula in question has always been there.
 
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For finding an original of image, you can just drag it into Google Images:
http://images.google.com/

If you use Google Chrome as your browser, this function is baked into the browser itself. Right click on an image and choose "Search Google for this image" and it'll open a new tab showing the same results as shown above. A great tool I have to say as it's amazing the amount of images you come across on fringe websites claiming to be something they're not.
 
A great article from David Dunning in the Conversation:

Why the Internet isn’t making us smarter – and how to fight back

Excerpts from the article...


Rumor-mongers, politicians, vested interests, a sensationalizing media and people with intellectual axes to grind all inject false information into the Internet.

So do a lot of well-intentioned but misinformed people. In fact, a study published in the January 2016 Proceedings of National Academy of Science documented just how quickly dubious conspiracy theories spread across the Internet. Specifically, the researchers compared how quickly these rumors spread across Facebook relative to stories on scientific discoveries. Both conspiracy theories and scientific news spread quickly, with the majority of diffusion via Facebook for both types of stories happening within a day.

Making matters worse, misinformation is hard to distinguish from accurate fact. It often has the exact look and feel as the truth. In a series of studies Elanor Williams, Justin Kruger and I published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2013, we asked students to solve problems in intuitive physics, logic and finance. Those who consistently relied on false facts or principles – and thus gave the exact same wrong answer to every problem – expressed just as much confidence in their conclusions as those who answered every single problem right.
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Defend yourself
So, how so we separate Internet truth from the false?

First, don’t assume misinformation is obviously distinguishable from true information. Be careful. If the matter is important, perhaps you can start your search with the Internet; just don’t end there. Consult and consider other sources of authority. There is a reason why your doctor suffered medical school, why your financial advisor studied to gain that license.

Second, don’t do what conspiracy theorists did in the Facebook study. They readily spread stories that already fit their worldview. As such, they practiced confirmation bias, giving credence to evidence supporting what they already believed. As a consequence, the conspiracy theories they endorsed burrowed themselves into like-minded Facebook communities who rarely questioned their authenticity.
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Seeking evidence to the contrary
In addition, look for ways in which that diagnosis might be wrong. Research shows that “considering the opposite” – actively asking how a conclusion might be wrong – is a valuable exercise for reducing unwarranted faith in a conclusion.

After all, you should listen to Mark Twain, who, according to a dozen different websites, warned us, “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.”

Wise words, except a little more investigation reveals more detailed and researched sources with evidence that it wasn’t Mark Twain, but German physician Markus Herz who said them. I’m not surprised; in my Internet experience, I’ve learned to be wary of Twain quotes (Will Rogers, too). He was a brilliant wit, but he gets much too much credit for quotable quips.

Misinformation and true information often look awfully alike. The key to an informed life may not require gathering information as much as it does challenging the ideas you already have or have recently encountered. This may be an unpleasant task, and an unending one, but it is the best way to ensure that your brainy intellectual tapestry sports only true colors.
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Some tips for using Reverse Image Search:

Google is usually the first try, but TinyEye, although lacking some of the features of Google RIS, is an excellent alternative and saved my day many times in the past. I noticed that Google RIS performs poorly for example when you have only a black & white, or a color-modified copy of the photo. Google will often fail to find anything, or will only show similarly colored images.

I usually start searching in Google, when nothing is found, I try TinyEye. It often happened that TinyEye showed me a colored version of a B&W photo, or an edited version that Google did not see, but it still did not reveal the original, or the website I was hoping to find. When I then passed the alternative picture from TinyEye back again to Google, it suddenly offered plenty of hits, revealing the information I searched.

I noticed also that the image-URL search does not work always well. It may be perhaps due to the limitation of the search engines bots on certain servers by the robot.txt file, or due to connectivity problems. If the URL search fails, do not give up immediately - it may help saving the image locally, and using the upload search function instead.

This small trick with Google Image Search may perhaps help someone too:
When in a country where the local version of Google (for example google.fr or google.de) overrides the .com version, I found the interface for "all sizes" of an image becomes very user unfriendly. The US version and also some other localized mutations (i.e. google.cz) show a bigger version of an image quickly on the same page via JavaScript, and you can navigate through the list with the arrow keys. But when you click a thumbnail on the unfriendly version (*.fr, *.de and possibly other countries), it opens the target page instead. It is very inconvenient and slowing down the search. I did not find any option in Google settings for it, but when it happens, I simply replace the local extension (i.e. "fr" or "de") in the URL by "us" ("com" does not work, because it automatically reloads the local page again).

When both Google and TinyEye fail, you can try also KarmaDecay. It searches in the Reddit posts, but at the top it also lists links to other image searches - besides Google and TinyEye, also Bing, and then you can also inspect many properties of the file at ImgOps. On the ImgOps page, there are links for inspecting HTTP headers, for encryption analysis, for viewing geo tags and other EXIF, and much more - it is a useful tool for tracking the origins, or for revealing some hidden details about the author, server, location, or camera. ImgOps also lists two additional Reverse Image Search links - Yandex (Russian SE) and Baidu (Chinese SE), which can be quite useful too.

Of course, the functionality of all search engines quickly changes, so what I write here for example about the poor performance of Google on B&W or modified images, may not be applicable in a few weeks or months. It is still useful to know that Google is not the only alternative, and that the other options sometimes bring even better results.

Have a look, for example, at the reverse image search of Mick's avatar in Google an in Tiny Eye - the "all sizes" of Google show only completely unrelated faces instead of Mick, just at the very bottom it shows the 48x48 pixels icon. In contrary, TinyEye finds plenty of versions in different sizes, including one of 552x672 pixels at mickwest.com:

ris-01.jpg
 
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An update about the Reverse Image Search - although Google's RIS gets a bit better with the time (for example it now finally recognizes Mick's avatar), unlike TinEye it still has troubles to find original colored photos if you have only a monochrome version of it. Its database also quite differs from the one of TinEye, so if you do not find an image with Google, TinEye.com is definitely worth the try.

However, in the last time I started to use more and more the Reverse Image Search function of the Russian search engine Yandex (https://yandex.com/images/search). Not sure if it is valid for all kind of photos and images, but I already tried it with couple of hundreds of photos, and am getting valid hits with Yandex at the majority of pictures that Google fails to find. Also, except of well known objects or photos from main-stream media, I am typically getting more relevant results at Yandex than at Google, and also the function "visually similar images" seem to be working better at Yandex.

So if you fail to find an image source with Google, there is a good chance Yandex or TinEye can still help you.

Both TinEye and Yandex seem to handle better than Google not only B&W vs. colored versions of the same photo, but also photos that were more seriously modified (trimmed, merged with other photos into a collage, etc.).
 
This is a small thing, but something I use daily to streamline results served up by Google.

On the far right of the google page is a "Tools" button.

If you click it, you'll get a useful time option that is set to "Any Time" by default.

This gives you a drop-down menu that will let you limit results to just the last hour
(good for breaking stories"), day, week, month or year.
It's quick and helpful if you're trying to avoid too much stuff or dubious redacted stuff.

But it also gives a "Custom Range" option which is what I use the most:
This morning I was looking for info on a legal case from 2004...and used Custom Range to
only return results from that year. Results returned were not a flood, and were on point.

Likewise, I was looking for info about how NPS fared in the new Trump budget proposal,
but knew that yesterday's (4/3/17) announcement of Trump giving his first ($78,333.32)
salary check to NPS would dominate results and create such a flood of info that it would
take forever to sift through it for what I wanted. So I used Custom Range from
3/1/17 to 4/2/17 on "Trump" "NPS" & "budget" and got my relatively few results without any
pollution from yesterday's big headlines.
 
So I used Custom Range from
3/1/17 to 4/2/17 on "Trump" "NPS" & "budget" and got my relatively few results without any
pollution from yesterday's big headlines.

For a very quick filter to remove current news, I often just put in last year - you don't always need to bother with accurate "from" and "to" dates:

For example:
20170404-120558-sa1wx.jpg
 
I have been fooled by fake images, so the article about Tips on How to Spot Fake Photos on the Web from Gizmodo provides a few extra suggestions on how not to be fooled. These tips likely have been covered in other threads on Metabunk, but figured that having them provided here would be appropriate.

Excerpts:


The tell-tale signs
Let’s start with the basics, as obvious as they really should be to anyone with a pair of eyes: Missing limbs, extra heads, and objects that are only half there are some of the tell-tale signs of a bad Photoshop attempt.



Unfortunately for fake photo spotters, image editing tools are getting more accessible and more advanced, so it’s easier than ever to come up with forgeries that look genuine. If there’s nothing obviously awry with the picture in front of you, check for more subtle mistakes, like a shadow or lighting effect that just doesn’t look right.
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As mentioned in a prior reply... Reverse Image Search


Check the file data
You can find yet more evidence for photo tampering if you dig deeper into an image and its metadata, all the data hidden away that you don’t see with the naked eye. EXIF data, which you can get at through your image editor or a web app, will show you where and when an image was snapped, unless the data has been wiped or doctored.


Checking this data might not give you a definitive answer as to whether a picture is genuine—it’s actually pretty simple to fake or remove EXIF data, and a lot of online images won’t include it at all—but it might offer up some extra clues for your forensic analysis.
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Furthermore, you can also play around with levels and filters in a program like Photoshop, which may be enough to reveal edits—as was the case with this Nikon award-winning snap of an airplane. A quick adjustment in the levels was enough to reveal the cut-out, and you can experiment with similar tools in your own image editor.


If you know your photograph then you can get even smarter with your forgery detection: Low-light shots, like the hot air balloon one we featured here, require a long exposure to let in as much light as possible—and that means fast-moving objects in the scene should be blurred. If they aren’t, alarm bells should be ringing in your head.
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Thank you guys for this thread. I would also like to hear how to do basic image editing fast and effective so I can use those techniques when posting here on metabunk.
 
Thank you guys for this thread. I would also like to hear how to do basic image editing fast and effective so I can use those techniques when posting here on metabunk.
there are a few threads in the How To forum (on main menu bar if you are on a computer). some recommended editing programs, how to do the comparison side by side photos etc.
 
http://archive.org/

Enter the url and then "Take me Back". You will get a calendar with blue dots for each time the page was stored (might not actually have changed), and a timeline at the top. Click on one, then you'll get the old page and navigation controls at the top. Sometimes a page is not available, try a different date.

Usually the oldest is the most useful, but sometimes it's useful click through until you see a change. You can use the URL to link directly to an old version of a page.
How about finding specific quotes on there, like the Brzezinski one from the other day? How did you do that?
 
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How about finding specific quotes on there, like the Brzezinski one from the other day? How did you do that?
You don't. You google the quote and if you see a source link, you 'copy link' address then paste it into the wayback machine.
pop.png
 
From ScienceAlert; These Free Resources on Science Could Be The Answer to The 'Fake News' Epidemic
Don't lose hope.


JOLENE CREIGHTON AND CHELSEA GOHD, FUTURISM
23 NOV 2017


There exists an overwhelming barrage of intentional misinformation online, on television, and in print publications. This misinformation is especially prevalent when it comes to science. It's also deadly.

While scientific conspiracy theorists used to seem like a small subset of the population - a population that stayed hidden in secluded closets surrounded by tinfoil and private chatrooms - we have seen dramatic shifts in the past few years.

From people who fear-monger about vaccines to people who fear-monger about GMOs to professors at Columbia University who knowingly and intentionally promote pseudoscience for personal gains - we have seen just how prevalent and deeply rooted scientific misinformation is.

Luckily, although the internet is replete with sensationalism and outright lies, it is also home to free, reliable, and (perhaps most importantly) interesting science information.
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...until this world has a clear and structured way to tell fact from fake news, here's a host of free resources - prevetted and preapproved - from some the greatest thinkers, innovators, and institutions of our time.

In August of 2016, NASA announced that they were opening up their research library to the public.

In the release, NASA stated that "all NASA-funded authors and co-authors (both civil servant and non-civil servant) will be required to deposit copies of their peer-reviewed scientific publications and associated data into NASA's publication repository called NASA PubSpace."

The database has been alive and well since that time, and it is host to a plethora of peer reviewed research articles from experts. You can access these articles and read the findings without any third party commentary or analysis.

ScienceMatters is a science publishing company that aims to change people's perspectives on science (and scientific research) by providing a more democratised platform - one that all individuals can access.

You can head to that site to find content that contains verified observations made by scientists. Forget the story. Just get the data. Other peer review platforms that also aim to bring science to the world include both eLife and Frontiers.

Along these same lines, Nature is an internationally recognised scientific journal. It covers just about every topic, from physics to the environment, and its news section hosts expert commentary on developments in science and technology from around the globe.

Thanks to the internet, even those who haven't had the opportunity to go to college can get a university education. MIT has a number of full courses available online - all free - covering both the undergraduate and graduate level.

If MIT isn't your top selection, then try the free courses from Stanford or Harvard. Or you can head to Open Culture, which has a vast database of courses and over 170 free textbooks.

Still not enough? Want more options for furthering your education? Well, there's also Coursera, edX, Open Culture, Khan Academy, and Duolingo, which offers free language courses.

The Feynman Lectures is one of the most popular lecture series in physics. It's an easy-to-understand resource for science enthusiasts, students, and teachers alike. Caltech and The Feynman Lectures website have collaborated to put these lectures online, completely free of cost.Robot Hugs deals with issues related to mental health, racism, and the future of society and culture, and all of this in comic form.

Minute Physics breaks down complex physics concepts into easy-to-understand, short videos. There's also Physics Girl by Dianna Cowern, which includes experiments, explainers, and hypothetical questions on all things science.

SciShow by Hank Green (and others) is, perhaps, one of the largest scientific endeavours on the internet. It is a huge (mammoth, really) production.
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From Poynter.org: 10 tips for verifying viral social media videos

Excerpt of the 10 tips:



1. Think critically. Before dissecting the video itself, see if there’s anything else you can use to debunk or confirm it. Has it been reported in the media? Is there anything in the video that seems obviously doctored? Videos are relatively hard to verify, so try to avoid doing unneeded work.

2. Look for inflammatory language and basic information, such as the who, what, when, where, why and how. If the former is present while the latter is lacking, there’s a good indicator that the video could be misleading.

“If the video uses slurs or demeaning language there's a good chance that the accompanying text is only telling a partial (or completely fictional) version of the backstory … What information was shared with the video? I've always found videos lacking basic information to be suspect.” – Dan Evon, content manager at Snopes

3. See if the details of the video change depending on the sharer. If one post claims a video takes place in one country while another say it doesn’t, that should cause some pause. “The backstories for hoax videos are frequently changed to cater to certain audiences,” Evan said. Additionally, watch the video and read its accompanying text separately to determine whether or not what it claims to depict is plausible.

4. Use tools like Amnesty International’s YouTube Dataviewer or download the InVid browser extension. While the former focuses exclusively on YouTube, the latter allows people to paste a link from YouTube, Facebook or Twitter to get more information about its origins, as well as pull out key frames for further inspection.

“It allows you to figure out if the video has been published before, as well as where the video was shot, because the similarity search can recognize some place, some point of interest … most of the videos that we see are just decontextualized videos — videos that already exist on the web and are used in another context.” – Denis Teyssou, editorial manager of the Agence France Presse MediaLab

5. If you’re on mobile, take a screenshot of the video and upload it to a reverse image search service to see if it’s published elsewhere online — that can give you a better clue as to whether or not it’s true. Google and TinEye are great tools for this.

6. If pulling individual frames from InVid doesn’t work, try slowing the video down using software like VLC to see the transitions. With fake videos, it’s relatively easy to tell when a scene is doctored if you watch in slow motion. Alternatively, try using FFmpeg to get more detailed key frames, then run a reverse image search.

7. Download the video and check out its metadata. While most social media platform strip this information out once someone uploads it, if you have the source material, there might be clues as to the videos origin. Try using your computer’s native file browser or things like Exiftool.

8. If the video takes place outside, use geolocation software to check whether it’s actually where it claims to be. Google Earth and Wikimapia, a user-annotated collection of satellite imagery, are good tools for this.

“We probably use geolocation tools most often. If you know the location, and it’s correct and verified, you’ll probably find more information related to the case … figure out where it was taken, determine visual cues and match that with satellite imagery.” – Christiaan Triebert, a digital investigator and trainer at Bellingcat

9. Check the time when the video was filmed. If there are shadows visible, you can determine when the video was shot by checking their directions against a specific time of year using tools like Suncalc. That could help you either verify or debunk a video based on its timeframe.

10. If all else fails, try doing a quick search for some keywords related to the video on YouTube. Triebert said that — especially with videos that draw upon video game footage to misinform — hoaxers will often pull directly from the video sharing platform using the same keywords.
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Recently been searching for pdfs of documents and books, and noticed that when google says "some results have been ommitted due to copyright issues" it probably means it's available, just not showing up.

Sure enough, using duckduckgo.com brought me what I needed.
 
Recently been searching for pdfs of documents and books, and noticed that when google says "some results have been ommitted due to copyright issues" it probably means it's available, just not showing up.

Sure enough, using duckduckgo.com brought me what I needed.
Can you give an example?
 
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