A logical fallacy is a flaw in reasoning. Logical fallacies are like tricks or illusions of thought, and they’re often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people. Don’t be fooled! This website has been designed to help you identify and call out dodgy logic wherever it may raise its ugly, incoherent head. Rollover the icons above and click for examples.
Download your own version from this site.
On this Theme Thursday, we shift gears to Women in Mathematics and their contributions to the field. Written by Lynn Osen, this book highlights “the colorful lives of these women, who often traveled in the most avant-garde circles of their day, are presented in fascinating detail. The obstacles and censures that were also a part of their lives are a sobering reminder of the bias against women still present in this and other fields of academic endeavor.
“Mathematicians, science historians, and general readers will find this book a lively history; women will find it a reminder of a proud tradition and a challenge to take their rightful place in academic life today.”
The library has recently acquired access to some excellent scholarly databases that we hope will be useful to your students, as well as for your own research. These are linked and described below. Please let your liaison librarian know if you have any questions.
In addition, our video streaming service, Kanopy, continues to add some amazing content. A recent list of new titles is available here.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
http://find.galegroup.com/ecco/start.do?prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=uiuc_iwu
Based upon the English Short Title Catalogue, ECCO offers access to the most comprehensive online library of 18th century book titles printed in the United Kingdom. Full-text searching across all 26 million pages, including books and directories, Bibles, sheet music, sermons, advertisements, and works by celebrated and lesser-known authors. Includes rare works from women writers of the 18th Century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous editions of the works of Shakespeare.
Independent Voices
http://voices.revealdigital.com/
A digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers
http://find.galegroup.com/ncnp/start.do?prodId=NCNP&userGroupName=uiuc_iwu
A full-text database of American newspapers published between 1800 and 1900. The complete content of each issue is available, including advertisements, serialized fiction and book reviews. Articles or full-page images may be printed, emailed, or saved in PDF format.
Sabin Americana
http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/Sabin;jsessionid=E99F2AEE8BA733F47929F7C6D9DF95C1?locID=uiuc_iwu
A comprehensive collection of works about the Americas from the time of discovery through the early 20th century. It provides original accounts of discovery and exploration, pioneering and westward expansion, the U.S. Civil War and other military actions, Native Americans, slavery and abolition, and religious history; includes valuable primary documents to support research in the areas of history, political science, anthropology, women’s studies, religious studies, Latin American/Caribbean studies and more.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive
http://find.galegroup.com/sas/start.do?prodId=SAS&userGroupName=uiuc_iwu
Contains 5.4 million cross-searchable pages, from collections published through partnerships with the Amistad Research Center, the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the British Library, the National Archives in Kew, Oberlin College, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the University of Miami, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and many other institutions.
Times Digital Archive, 1785-1985
http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/start.do?prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=uiuc_iwu
Provides access to the entire newspaper, with all news articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos, editorial and commentary, and features. A valuable primary source tool for history, social science research, arts, and humanities courses.
Last week we talked about bias, but recognizing bias isn’t the only way to identify quality in a source. Here are some questions to consider when looking at a source.
INITIAL APPRAISAL
A. Author
B. Date of Publication
C. Edition or Revision
Is this a first edition of this publication or not? Further editions indicate a source has been revised and updated to reflect changes in knowledge, include omissions, and harmonize with its intended reader’s needs. Also, many printings or editions may indicate that the work has become a standard source in the area and is reliable. If you are using a Web source, do the pages indicate revision dates?
D. Publisher
Note the publisher. If the source is published by a university press, it is likely to be scholarly. Although the fact that the publisher is reputable does not necessarily guarantee quality, it does show that the publisher may have high regard for the source being published.
E. Title of Journal
Is this a scholarly or a popular journal? This distinction is important because it indicates different levels of complexity in conveying ideas. If you need help in determining the type of journal, see Distinguishing Scholarly from Non-Scholarly Periodicals.
On this Theme Thursday, we explore Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientifist Problem of His Time. Though focusing on a male contribution to scientific knowledge, Dava Sobel is an New York Times author and American writer of popular expositions of scientific topics. She was presented with the Klumpke-Roberts Award for outstanding contributions to public understanding and appreciation of astronomy in 2008. In 2006, she was the Robert Vare Nonfiction Writer-in-Residence at the University of Chicago. She received the 2001 Public Service Award of the National Science Board for fostering public awareness of science.
From Amazon, “Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that “the longitude problem” was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day-and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives, and the increasing fortunes of nations, hung on a resolution. The scientific establishment of Europe-from Galileo to Sir Isaac Newton-had mapped the heavens in both hemispheres in its certain pursuit of a celestial answer. In stark contrast, one man, John Harrison, dared to imagine a mechanical solution-a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest, and of Harrison’s forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a new window on our world.”
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as recognizing fake news and reporting it. There are legitimate news and scholarly articles published loaded with bias. The current news rhetoric is really good at pointing out political bias and how facts are “alternative” or misconstrued, but there are more types of bias than political bias. Be sure to watch out for:
Commercial Bias
News is sponsored by advertisers. Does the news presented reflect the advertisements embedded within the media?
Temporal Bias
News agencies look for “breaking stories,” often relegating old news to the back page or leaving it entirely uncovered. Scan the back pages too!
Visual Bias
Including visuals will draw the reader’s attention. Do images presented evoke specific responses? Do they prejudice the reader to view the news one way?
Sensationalism
Good news is less exciting than news that is shocking or frightening. Does the media exaggerate details to make a story more interesting? Does the news agency focus only on the negative aspects of a story?
Narrative Bias
Writers will generally develop a plot line – beginning, middle, and end – complete with drama. News, however, is rarely so tidy. Remind yourself that stories you read in the news are “unfolding.” If a story captures your attention, its best to follow that story over a period of time.
Fairness Bias
Ethical journalism is, in theory, fair. When a controversy arises, reporters will generally attempt to get the “other side” of the story. When a rebuttal is reported, it can seem like the media is taking one side or another. Read carefully to determine if presentation of both arguments is neutral.
Expediency Bias
News is driven by deadlines. Those deadlines sometimes mean that reporters will return to experts they know well and have had successful contacts with previously. This may slant news in towards the political views of these experts.
On this Theme Thursday, we dive into the Handmaiden’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, a book with an interesting take on who has control of women’s bodies. In the world of the near future, who will control women’s bodies?
“Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable…,” from Amazon.
Women’s History Month is an annual declared month that highlights the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. It is celebrated during March in the US, UK, and Australia, and corresponds with International Women’s Day on March 8.
Kanopy is a video streaming service made available through The Ames Library and has recently made several films available in honor of Women’s History Month. Check them out!
So you’ve heard a lot about fake news, misinformation, and fact checking. That you need to be a responsible consumer of information, political or otherwise. Political fact-checkers investigate submitted claims from politicians and other sources of authority for accuracy and then write stories about their findings.
The “big three” non-partisan political fact-checkers—Politifact, Factcheck.org, and the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker—came of age in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. Along with these other fact-checkers (listed below), several partisan sites exist.
So what do you do when you see a news story you think might be fake? Use one of the above sites or try finding other news articles that present the same ideas. This is called triangulation. Triangulation is a social science methodology of verifying information by finding the same information in multiple sources.
Say you figure out you’re reading something fake. What then? Check out this Buzzfeed article on reporting fake news and preventing it from spreading on Facebook.
On this Theme Thursday we’re going to highlight a woman who expanded on Darwin’s theory and has pushed the theory of evolution into modern times. “Although Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution laid the foundations of modern biology, it did not tell the whole story. Most remarkably, The Origin of Species said very little about, of all things, the origins of species. Darwin and his modern successors have shown very convincingly how inherited variations are naturally selected, but they leave unanswered how variant organisms come to be in the first place.
“In Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, renowned scientist Lynn Margulis shows that symbiosis, which simply means members of different species living in physical contact with each other, is crucial to the origins of evolutionary novelty. Ranging from bacteria, the smallest kinds of life, to the largest—the living Earth itself—Margulis explains the symbiotic 
origins of many of evolution’s most important innovations. The very cells we’re made of started as symbiotic unions of different kinds of bacteria. Sex—and its inevitable corollary, death—arose when failed attempts at cannibalism resulted in seasonally repeated mergers of some of our tiniest ancestors. Dry land became forested only after symbioses of algae and fungi evolved into plants. Since all living things are bathed by the same waters and atmosphere, all the inhabitants of Earth belong to a symbiotic union. Gaia, the finely tuned largest ecosystem of the Earth’s surface, is just symbiosis as seen from space.
“Along the way, Margulis describes her initiation into the world of science and the early steps in the present revolution in evolutionary biology; the importance of species classification for how we think about the living world; and the way “academic apartheid” can block scientific advancement. Written with enthusiasm and authority, this is a book that could change the way you view our living Earth…” from Amazon.
