By Paul Oestreicher
The last Republican presidential debate (held on December 10th) was another unfortunate example of the downward spiral of truth in politics.
In the bet heard ‘round the world, Mitt Romney offered $10,000 to Texas governor Rick Perry if he could prove the former Massachusetts governor really endorsed individual health care mandates in his book No Apologies.
In addition to the tone-deafness of wagering five figures when so many Americans are suffering in this sluggish economy, this episode opens a dark realm where our political leaders are betting each other on the truth.
We're all disturbed when facts are ignored or twisted. I bristle especially when it comes to junk science and false health claims.
During and after a Republican presidential debate in September, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's assertions that Merck's HPV vaccine may cause mental retardation went beyond inaccurate; it directly undermined crucial public health information.
She ignored the experience of millions (and the lives saved, the disease prevented), clinical evidence, and the findings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
It would be horrific if Ms. Bachmann's fear-mongering statements led to just one girl eventually getting cervical cancer because her mother decided against vaccination. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts."
Of course, health advocates, and public health and medical professionals blitzed the news media with the actual facts after the debate. Many news outlets also published corrections and comments the next day.
It's important and worthwhile and ... maybe too late to matter. How many listen to the pundits after the main event is over or read the news articles published hours afterward to check the veracity of the candidates? Just some small fraction of the debate audience, I'll bet.
The damage to the truth is done in another way, too. For some, the corrections will stick in their brains; for others, however, it will be in one ear and out the other. Bad or damaging information can be difficult to defeat because once in place, misinformation is terribly difficult to retract and, harder still, to erase from one's memory.
A 2005 study by Stephan Lewandowsky et al. published in Psychological Science addressed the challenge of undoing false or misleading statements.
The researchers showed that “Americans showed no sensitivity to corrections of misinformation, even when they knew that an event had been retracted.”
The bottom line was that people may continue to rely on misinformation even when a subsequent retraction is made and remembered.
So, here's a proposal that will hold every candidates' feet to the fire. Let's have all the fact checking completed during the debates.
Before everyone shakes hands and calls it a night, a final segment would be added: the candidates are confronted with their false or misleading talking points (maybe even a report card on how accurate or truthful they've been) and are asked to address the issues right then and there.
During the course of the debate, all of the statements could be crunched through the vast holdings of credible, objective knowledge.
The network and cable television networks, along with Bloomberg, Google and Yahoo!, have co-sponsored these events, for crying out loud. They're all supposed to be information experts. And, if IBM's Watson computer can win at Jeopardy!, there's no reason that near-real time fact checking couldn't be a reality.
This new system could be like PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter on steroids. But I would not allow any opinion sites or blogs to be a part of the fact checking database – only transcripts, proceedings and testimony; almanacs and atlases; laws, regulations and policy statements; credible survey data, and peer-reviewed research reports.
A wide range of news outlets, amplified by Google/YouTube, Yahoo and Twitter, have expanded interest and engagement in the political debates; it's yet another wonder of mainstream and digital media. Here's a way for them and others to ensure that the widening audience gets the facts and not the flimflam.
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Paul Oestreicher is president of Oestreicher Communications, adjunct professor at NYU and author of “Camelot, Inc.: Leadership and Management Insights from King Arthur and the Round Table.” He may be reached at paul.oestreicher [at] ocomms [dot] com.