Review – unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation

I found this book at Half Price Books a couple days ago and the description on the cover sounded interesting;

unSpun reveals the secrets of separating facts from disinformation, such as:

• The warning signs of spin, hype, and bogus news
• common tricks used to deceive us
• how to find trustworthy and objective sources of information

and in general it does a decent job.  It lays out the basic ways that marketers, PR men, and politicians attempt to spin facts and gives examples of each.  It also illustrates each major point with an amusing story.  In addition the authors explain why people are so dogged in sticking to their beliefs in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  I was already aware of a lot of them, such as confirmation bias, and I do my best to avoid them when I am writing here by doing things like always trying to seek out the primary source document and purposefully going to websites with opposing views; even so I was able to identify places where I have slipped up, and I have definitely been able to spot areas where blogs I visit egregiously engage in the behaviors.  Of course I knew they were biased going in so I try and take that into consideration when evaluating what they have written.

I know I make it sound like I am a paragon of intellectual honesty, but that isn’t quite it.  It’s more that I am interested in what will really work rather than partisan solutions.  Personally my life experiences and reading / evaluation of issues leads me to believe that in most cases the conservative / small government solution is the best one.  That isn’t always the case and when it isn’t I want to know.

My one complaint is that the authors engage in a little spin themselves.  Despite being officially non-partisan, the authors’ political biases show through, in the way they present examples of political disinformation.  In almost every case the Republicans are presented first and the Democrats afterwards.  This leaves the impression that the Republicans are the primary offenders.  Not true.  Actually, I should have been prepared for this given that all the reviewers on the cover are liberals.  Despite this the information is useful and well presented.

Overall, I recommend reading this book.