random thoughts – Thinking Out Loud, aka The Broad Gaze http://johnthomson.org Thoughts on the social impacts of communication policy and educational technology. Sun, 22 Nov 2015 22:21:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.2 Googling Truth http://johnthomson.org/2008/04/03/googling-truth/ Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:10:16 +0000 http://johnthomson.org/blog/?p=251 Continue reading "Googling Truth"]]> I’ve had a few household problems lately where I’ve turned to my usual trusty answer-source–Google. Today it was a flood, and the question is how to (or can you) kill mold with bleach.  Most of the top hits said the same thing: bleach is ineffective at killing mold (especially on porous surfaces).

I have no reason not to believe this, but it brought up a feeling I’ve had lately.  Why do we trust Google top hits as correct?  It seems plausible, at least for topics like this, that people with an axe to grind might be the most likely to link and thus drive up page rankings. Perhaps Google has found a way around this, or perhaps the larger question is: has our perception “truth” changed?

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