Sarah Gibbard Cook
  • Home
  • About
  • Writing
  • Contact

Alternative Facts

1/30/2017

7 Comments

 
Years ago I did historical research for the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. A coal-fired power plant run by the Northern Indiana Public Service Company bordered the park. Ponds for disposal of fly ash, a coal combustion product, were leaking onto park land, raising the water table. At issue was whether the seepage was destroying the original ecology or, as NIPSCO claimed, restoring wetlands that prevailed before farmers dug drainage ditches in the 1800s.

Young and foolish, I asked IDNL senior scientist Dr. Bill Hendrickson what to do if our drainage ditch findings supported NIPSCO’s claim. He replied, “We want to know what you find, not what you think we want to hear.” It was a learning moment for me. National Park Service scientists continue to command my respect, as Bill did, by their insistence in putting facts before policy. They did it again last week.
​
As a writer of both fiction and nonfiction, I relish creative imagination as well as verified facts. We can value both, so long as we  know which we’re dealing with. Some historical novels and literary memoirs add a note telling the reader where fiction and fact diverge. That clarity marks the difference between tall tales and falsification. What are alternative facts, after all, but another name for fiction?
7 Comments
Lisa
1/30/2017 10:53:07 am

Interesting. This has come up for me twice in the last 18 hours with two different groups. First time was at book discussion last night, discussing a loosely historical fiction book set in 1912. How much can a writer get away with and what details they have wrong (as we know it) will make us distrust something larger (the answer was found on my iPad, which is that the term "brassiere" was first used in like 1898 in France so it was OK to use it in this book...). Admittedly, we were kind of looking for reasons why we didn't particularly like the book. So we had to admit that distrusting the writer was not one of those reasons. We still didn't like the way she CONVEYED the facts, however.

The second time was just this morning, driving and listening to WPR. The guest was talking about this exact thing, as to the media's responsibility to present the facts AS THE REPORTER KNOWS THEM within all the deadlines and return calls from sources and other limitations and parameters to getting the news disseminated. The whole topic of the media having the wrong facts (the bust was actually there) vs having a different interpretation of the facts was presented and mused upon.

Reply
Sarah link
1/30/2017 12:29:10 pm

Re how getting minor facts wrong hurts credibility, I recently read a mystery in which one character was wearing a University of West Virginia sweatshirt. I grew up at West Virginia University. Seeing it incorrectly called the University of West Virginia weakened the whole book for me, even though the sweatshirt was irrelevant to the plot.

And re our trust based on facts as we know them - I got called a couple of months ago on using "puke" (allegedly modern slang) in late medieval dialogue. Turns out the first known/written use of "puke" was by Shakespeare, so it's not wildly out of period. As a writer, I have to choose whether to avoid a term because readers THINK it's modern slang and lose trust in other details.

Reply
Lisa
1/31/2017 10:05:37 am

Ugh. University name wrong. Do you think they invented a university or were they actually referencing the one you know to exist under a different name?

I wonder if the term "alternative fact" will start to show up on lists as new words added to dictionaries and stuff.

Reply
Sarah link
1/31/2017 03:49:08 pm

Given how minor the sweatshirt was in the story, I inferred that the author assumed every state has a "University of (State Name)" and didn't check it out.

I liked that Merriam Webster said they had a spike of look-ups of "fact." Yes, it will be interesting to see how reference books treat the phrase, if at all.

Rhonda Peterson
2/3/2017 11:45:41 pm

Those are good examples to keep in mind, Sarah.

I've read a couple of articles in the past week or so about human behavior studies on how we respond when facts don't confirm what we already believe or think we know. It seems that we so want to have our beliefs confirmed by the outer world, that when the outer world doesn't cooperate, we reinterpret the evidence or just ignore it altogether! It makes me think of that action children do (or used to do, anyway) when they want to actively block someone out--sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "La, la, la, I can't hear you!"

Reply
Sarah link
2/4/2017 07:57:40 am

Confirmation bias often misleads us. Perhaps even more often, it serves a positive purpose in helping us make sense of things. If I catch a glimpse of what looks like a wolf in the yard, I will assume it's a dog because that's what I believe lives around here. And that will most likely be true, even if the animal looked more like a wolf.

In politics and public affairs, doesn't almost everybody decide who's telling the truth or lying based in part on who they already believe to be a liar? The default is that things will be what we already think they are. Often true, sometimes misleading.

Reply
Kim M link
9/6/2021 09:11:58 pm

Very nicce post

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. 

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016

    RSS Feed


      ​get updates

    Sign up
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Writing
  • Contact