Skeptic Project

Danny, you haven't posted your age yet but my guess is that you're a bit younger than some of the people who visit this site. Therefore, you're still in the process of learning how this works.

Just a couple of quick thoughts on how to evaluate something. Let's say somebody (Alex Jones, David Icke, Barack Obama, Noam Chomsky, Edward Winston, Muertos) makes a claim that X is factually true. You should ask yourself these questions:

1. What type of claim is X? Are they saying "X definitely happened," or "X is in the process of happening now," or "X is going to happen in the future?" (The most spurious claims made by anyone are about what's going to happen in the future).

2. What is the person's relationship to the thing they're claiming? This is similar to the first question. Are they saying, "I personally witnessed X happening?" Or are they saying, "I BELIEVE that X is happening/has happened, but I wasn't there"?

3. How reliable is the person making the claim? This means, have they made these type of claims before? If so, how many of them have turned out to be true? Do they ever make claims that CANNOT be proven true, or cannot be proven true YET? (That should always make you skeptical). Have they ever made claims in the past that have proven to be totally false? If they claim to predict that X is happening now or will be happening in the future, how good is their track record in making predictions?

4. What sources are there to back up the claim of X? (Other people merely quoting that the claimant said X happened/is happening do not count). If it's on a news outlet, or what appears to be a news outlet, how many other news outlets are reporting it? Are news outlets from other countries (BBC, India News, Xinhua, Tass) reporting the same thing? If they are, do their reports differ from the one you've heard?

5. Where did you first hear about this claim? Was it from a web site or from YouTube? Almost nothing that is factually true ORIGINATES from a web site or from YouTube. Almost all content on the Internet starts out from some other source and then is REPEATED on a web site or YouTube. Find out who was the first person to claim X, when, and where. If the first person to claim that Senator Smith crashed his car into a telephone pole on Main Street is an eyewitness who actually saw the crash and then told station WKBX, and then it went up on TMZ.Com, Politico and Twitter after that, chances of it being true are much greater than if the very first person to say "Senator Smith crashed his car into a telephone pole on Main Street" is some blogger on Politico.

6. Does the person making the claim react defensively when people say they want to check its veracity for themselves? People who make claims that are true universally have no fear of this. They even invite it. Does the maker of that YouTube video get huffy if you say you think it's bullshit? People trying to sell you bullshit will try to make you feel bad or dishonest for not taking their word for it. People telling you something that is true won't.

This is a handy guide for evaluating what you see and hear out there, especially about wild sounding stuff like the NWO, FEMA camps or Alex Jones claims.

Maybe this is a lot to read, but it is honestly intended as helpful, and maybe a little insight into how we skeptics think.

That's a great list, but it could be limited to the following, I think:

1) Can you find the actual origin of the claim? Does the origin represent the correct context?
2) What reason would the person have for making the claim? Do they stand to benefit?

Usually by the second part of #1 you can tell someone's full of shit. Alex Jones is notorious for taking things out of context or claiming events have happened which didn't, or that things exist that do not.

I think one of the reasons people think Alex Jones is correct is just his sheer confidence when he makes claims, you assume that someone that confident about "having the documents!!" must... really... like... have the documents?