Dust or Stars?

“Imagine you were looking through the Hubble space telescope, and a percent of what you thought were stars turned out to be dust on the lens.”

This quote closed out a story I recently heard on NPR investigating fraud and clerical errors associated with areas of the world claiming to have reached unprecedented levels of human longevity.

I have always been fascinated by people who live long lives and the “Blue Zones,” where people seem to exude health and wellness…like they somehow located the fountain of youth and drank the magic elixir.

One of these Blue Zones is in Costa Rica, and the NPR story shared a new study that uncovered 42 percent of the population was lying on the census used to measure the impressive aging data. Their motives were often driven by need—for example, not reporting a death might enable someone to continue receiving pension funds.

“The places on the planet that seem to have residents reaching super advanced age are rife with pension fraud, which obscures how old they were whenever they did pass away.”

This “age inflation” complicates a point of view that surfaced about what was making people in the Blue Zones live longer lives—including plant-based diets and a high level of physical activity.

What happens when all that data turns out to be false?

It doesn’t necessarily mean that a plant-based diet is no longer considered good for you, for example, but it might make you reconsider putting all your apples in one cart. It might make you question what is true and what is fabricated.

This story came at an ideal time for me when pondering what is and is not “true.” We are sorting through massive misinformation surrounding the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and a charged presidential election looms just weeks away. How can we possibly know what is real and what is false?

Above all, my key takeaway from the NPR story and post-Helene coverage is this advice: Do not immediately share or accept things you see on social media as truth until you have done your homework to confirm their accuracy.

My rule of thumb is to “triangulate the data,” as I keep repeating in my mind. If three sources you trust and validate confirm the information, it might be accurate and trustworthy.

If you are new to the process of being your own fact-checker, here are some tactics to use to spot an untruth:

  1. Pay attention to the website URL sourcing your news. Does the URL or domain look accurate? Websites ending in “abc.com.co” should not be trusted, for instance.
  2. If a source is unfamiliar, read its “About Us” section and look for straightforward, factual language. It should not be emotionalized and should include the names of leaders, whom you can also research and find credentials for easily.
  3. Validate those being quoted in a story. Quality journalists provide credentials lending subject matter expertise to references.
  4. Read the comments. Other folks like you are trying to discern the truth from the lies and will call out inaccurate information.
  5. Check sources like Snopes.com, which has been around for nearly three decades. I have used this source for years to see if rumors might be true, even before social media was ubiquitous.
  6. Reverse image search. Take a screenshot and use Google Lens to see if the photo appears in multiple sources beyond the sketchy corner of the internet where you found it. If you cannot find it in reputable sources, it is probably AI-generated.

Ultimately, it is essential to always be humble and willing to discover the truth, even if it does not align with your point of view. After all, it could be a speck of dust instead of a star.

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Dust or Stars?

“Imagine you were looking through the Hubble space telescope, and a percent of what you thought were stars turned out to be dust on the lens.”

This quote closed out a story I recently heard on NPR investigating fraud and clerical errors associated with areas of the world claiming to have reached unprecedented levels of human longevity.