{"id":174,"date":"2018-01-22T20:03:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T20:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-webliteracy\/chapter\/avoiding-confirmation-bias-in-searches\/"},"modified":"2018-01-22T20:03:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-22T20:03:55","slug":"avoiding-confirmation-bias-in-searches","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-webliteracy\/chapter\/avoiding-confirmation-bias-in-searches\/","title":{"raw":"Avoiding Confirmation Bias in Searches","rendered":"Avoiding Confirmation Bias in Searches"},"content":{"raw":"
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\n\nWas 9\/11 a hoax? Let\u2019s find out. We type in \u2018was 9\/11 a hoax\u2019 and we get:\n
\"\"<\/div>\nWell, look at that \u2014 not only the top result says that the attack on 9\/11 was faked \u2014 the\u00a0top five<\/em>\u00a0results do. To the untrained eye it looks like the press has been hiding something from you.\n\nBut of course the 9\/11 attacks were not faked. So why does Google return these results?\n\nThe main reason here is the term \u2014 the term \u201choax\u201d is applied to the 9\/11 attacks primarily on conspiracy sites. So when Google looks for clusters on that term (and links to documents containing that term) it finds that conspiracy sites rank highly.\n\nThink about it \u2014 reputable physics journals, policy magazines, and national newspapers are not likely to run headlines asking if the attacks were a hoax. But conspiracy sites are.\n\nThe same holds true even for more benign searches. The question \u201cAre we eating too much protein\u201d has Google return a card from the Huffington Post, and a website from a vegan advocacy group.\n
\"\"<\/div>\nTo avoid confirmation bias in searches:\n