跟读练习: Evaluating Sources & Fact Checking: Crash Course Scientific Thinking #6 - 通过YouTube学习英语口语
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Are you eating a credit card's worth of plastic every week?
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Are you eating a credit card's worth of plastic every week?
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Uh, probably not.
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But if you saw headlines like this, you might worry that you are.
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These days, trying to piece together what to believe can feel impossible.
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But we can still find reliable, trustworthy answers, as long as we know how to look for them.
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Hi, I'm Hank Green, and welcome to Crash Course Scientific Thinking.
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You probably already know that you shouldn't believe everything read, watch, or hear.
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On an internet where everyone is competing both for attention and to control narratives, it's no surprise that there are plenty of distortions,
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exaggerations, baseless claims, propaganda, and whatever this is.
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But it's also home to lots of good scientific information, too.
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So when it comes to something as important as science, how do we figure out what's reliable?
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Well, it helps to understand how a science story like this becomes news in the first place.
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See, that CNN article isn't the whole story.
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It's just the part we see as consumers of science news.
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That science news tastes bad.
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Think of it like the tip of the iceberg.
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There's a lot more going on below the surface.
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CNN got the details from this report by the WWF.
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No, not the wrestling group from the 90s, the Worldwide Fund for Nature.
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And they got it from a study they commissioned from researchers at Australia's University of Newcastle,
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which reported a range of possible amounts of plastic that people might consume in a week, from a high of 5 grams all the way down to 0.1 grams.
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But the WWF only reported the high end of the range, saying an average person could be ingesting approximately 5 grams of plastic per week,
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about the size of a credit card.
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And that technically could be true.
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It could be that much.
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There's a lot of things that could be true.
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It's like when an insurance company says, I could save you up to 15% or more on your car insurance.
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Up to 15% or more?
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That's all of the percents.
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So why would they do that?
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Well, different kinds of publications have different kinds of goals.
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And as a savvy consumer of science media, it's helpful for you to consider what those goals might be.
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Like, the WWF is a nonprofit advocacy group whose goal is to preserve nature through lobbying and research.
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So they might really want to sound the alarm about microplastics in order to bring people into their broader mission.
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Considering an outlet's goals gives us, as consumers, more information to consider.
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It gives us a broader context than just the story would alone.
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And while I would agree that microplastics are a big deal, only reporting on the upper range to make the situation feel more urgent
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and headline-worthy can make a situation seem a lot more dire than it actually is, and intentionally or not, be misleading.
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News organizations, by the way, also have goals that we should take into consideration.
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the goal to get a lot of people to click on an article.
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And a headline that says, you might eat between a tenth of a gram and five grams of microplastics every week, is not gonna get the clicks.
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What gets reported in the news is sometimes different from the information in the primary source, the first-hand account from the scientists who actually conducted the study.
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The primary source is the most accurate representation of what the scientists who conducted the research actually found.
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In this particular instance, the primary source was the study from the researchers at Newcastle who reported a range of possible amounts of plastic ingestion.
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So what happened between the primary source and CNN?
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Well, the Newcastle team got their results and shared them with the WWF.
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It was then written into a report by consultants who had
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not conducted the research directly in what we would call a secondary source.
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And this secondary source only listed the upper range of plastic we could be eating.
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Those are the numbers that got picked up by CNN.
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In science, news articles are often tertiary sources.
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They summarize the information of primary and secondary sources, and are usually not written by scientists.
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Sometimes when science gets reported, it can also get distorted.
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Sometimes it's an honest mistake, someone somewhere along the way got their facts mixed up.
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We call that misinformation.
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Information that is wrong or misleading.
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But because, as the kids say, we live in a society, we also have to worry about disinformation.
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that is intentionally misleading or false.
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But here's the thing.
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None of this means that we have to stop trusting reputable news organizations, or even advocacy organizations like the WWF wholesale.
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It just means we need to be more diligent when we are consuming news.
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And good science journalists have learned to navigate the scientific community.
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They often have experts they can reach out to for second opinions,
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and they present useful context behind a story to help the reader understand how the news fits into larger conversations in science.
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So, what does this mean for us?
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How can we, as non-scientists and non-journalists, dig down and figure out when a story is reliable and when it isn't?
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I think it's time for some sage advice.
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That's the key, Hank.
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You don't dig, you sift.
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It's a way of evaluating sources developed by digital literacy expert Mike Caulfield from the University of Washington.
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The S stands for stop.
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Stop.
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When you see something that triggers a strong emotional response, you should stop and really think about what you're reading.
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So don't immediately text everyone I know and tell them
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that they couldn't book a flight with all the microplastics inside of them.
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Got it.
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What's next?
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Ah, investigate the source, the place that published the information.
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Who's putting it out there? And why?
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In this case, we're looking at CNN.
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How do we find out if CNN is a reputable source?
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Well, we know they've been around for over 40 years.
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But let's investigate a bit further.
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So let's open a new tab and get the scoop on CNN.
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It looks like they're in the green zone on this media bias chart from Harvard Library's research guides.
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We call this strategy lateral reading.
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Checking other websites, newspapers, and media guides like this one to make sure
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that the source you're getting the original information from is on the up and up.
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So if the original source is trustworthy, then we're good?
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Not yet.
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Up next is F.
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Find better coverage.
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Using those same lateral reading skills, we need to check if other sources are reporting the same thing.
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What are other outlets reporting?
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In this case, we can find some other sources citing the credit card stat.
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But we can also find reputable sources saying that it's misleading.
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If other reputable sources are disagreeing, it's a sign to take the source you found with a grain of salt.
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If other sources are agreeing, then it's a good sign you can dig deeper into what you read.
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So you've got to read not just beyond the headline, but beyond the first source, especially before you share it.
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Then you won't be surprised to hear the T.
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T is for trace claims to their original context.
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This is a big one.
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Often when we see quotes or images online, they're being taken out of context.
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So tracing them back to their origin can help us figure out if we're seeing the whole story.
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In this case, the CNN article tells us that the credit card claim comes from the WWF article, which CNN links to.
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There we can see that they got the claim from this original study.
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And here we can see the information in its original context, which stated humans may ingest 0.1 to 5 grams of microplastics weekly.
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Not, you're eating a credit card.
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Much more nuanced.
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So the high end of this range, which was in the original report, is actually 50 times greater than the low end of the range.
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That's a lot.
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And this has been your Sage Advice.
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Thanks, Sage.
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Okay, so sift is awesome, and in an age where we're getting so much of our news from social media,
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it's more important than ever for us to be discerning about the information that we are absorbing and sharing.
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Like, you will almost never see a primary source in a TikTok video.
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That should raise immediate red flags and encourage you to start sifting.
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Also, ChatGPT and other generative AI tools do not pass the SIFT test.
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They are not trustworthy as primary sources.
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And I get it, fact-checking can feel like a lot of work.
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For me, the SIFT method is a great tool, but there are other fact-checking methods out there, and the one you use and how you use it is a personal choice.
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But reliability isn't.
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Some sources are just more reliable and more trustworthy than others, and our personal biases don't change that.
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Like, the WWF might be an organization that does a lot of good, but there's still an advocacy group which is going to advocate for a certain cause.
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And that might mean occasionally misrepresenting scientific information.
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The point is, anytime we're looking at any source of science information, we have to remember that reputation
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and motive are among the most important things we should be looking for when it comes to sources.
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There might be a conflict of interest, like with the WWF, or even an obvious lack of reliability or trustworthiness when we start sifting through our sources.
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Thinking critically about the sources we're getting our news from is
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one of the best ways to make sure we aren't consuming a credit card's worth of bad information every week.
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But it's not foolproof.
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Even the sift method will let us down sometimes.
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Like we learned back in episode 1, none of us are immune to bad information.
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But tools like lateral reading are some of the best shields we have against the tide of mistruths.
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And I think that you'll find that as you start to sift through the sources, the trustworthy ones will rise to the surface more often than not.
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In our final episode, we're going to explore the crossroad of science and public perception.
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I'll see you then.
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This episode of Crash Course Scientific Thinking was produced in partnership with HHMI BioInteractive,
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bringing real science stories to thousands of high school and undergrad life science classrooms.
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If you're a teacher, visit their website for resources that explore the topics we discussed in the video today.
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Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Scientific Thinking, which was filmed in Missoula, Montana, and was made with the help of all of these nice people.
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If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join our community on Patreon.
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关于本课程
在本课程中，学习者将学习如何评估信息来源并进行事实检查，让你的科学思维更为有效。通过分析新闻报道和科学研究之间的关系，你将掌握识别可靠信息的技巧。同时，你将练习如何提高英语发音，以便更好地理解和分享这些知识。
关键词汇与短语
- 塑料消费 - 指人们在饮食中摄入塑料的情况。
- 科学新闻 - 关于科学研究和发现的报道。
- 主要来源 - 指研究人员最初发布的研究结果。
- 次要来源 - 通过解读或总结其他研究发布的信息。
- 非营利组织 - 以特定目标而非营利为目的的机构，例如保护环境的组织。
- 信息失真 - 不准确或误导性的报道。
- 危机意识 - 对某一问题的紧迫性或严重性的感知。
- 引人注目的标题 - 为了吸引读者点击而设计的新闻标题。
练习技巧
在观看视频时，使用 shadow speak的方法来提升你的英语发音。虽然视频的语速较快，但你可以通过暂停视频并重复每个句子的方式来跟读。注意发音、语调和停顿，这样可以更好地提高你的口语技能。在使用 shadowspeak 技术时，可以尝试模仿视频中演讲者的语气和风格，增强你的语音表达能力。与此同时，运用 shadow speech 方法，反复练习所学的关键词汇与短语，不仅能帮助你记忆，更能提升你的自信心，让你在 看YouTube学英语 的过程中获得丰富的学习体验。
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。