Lateral reading

Why it matters

School taught most of us to evaluate a text by reading it closely: check the tone, look for spelling mistakes, see whether it cites sources, read the “About us” page. That is vertical reading, and on the web it fails. Anyone can buy a clean design, a serious logo and a .org domain. The “About us” page was written by the people you are trying to check. A slick site is evidence that someone paid for a slick site.

In 2017, Sam Wineburg and Sarah McGrew at the Stanford History Education Group gave the same websites to three groups: historians with PhDs, Stanford undergraduates, and professional fact-checkers. The historians and students mostly stayed on the page, read carefully, and were fooled by a polished advocacy site posing as a medical body. The fact-checkers left the page within seconds, opened new tabs, searched the name of the organisation, and got the right answer faster. Reading less, learning more. The habit has a name: lateral reading.

How to do it

1. Resist the page. The moment you land on an unfamiliar site, author or “institute”, do not start evaluating the design or the argument. Note the name and move on.
2. Open a new tab and search the name. Type the site’s name, the author’s name or the institute, plus one of: “wikipedia”, “funding”, “who owns”, “fact check”. You are looking for what people with no stake in the site say about it.
3. Read the independent results first. A Wikipedia article (and its “Controversies” section), coverage in established media, a fact-checker’s note, a register of lobbyists or charities. Skip the site’s own press releases and anything that merely copies its text.
4. Ask three questions. Who is behind this? What is their track record? What do they gain if I believe it? If thirty seconds of searching cannot answer the first question, that is itself your answer.
5. Go back, now informed. Read the original page knowing who wrote it. A real study from a real research institute and a “study” from a one-person fake institute read very differently once you know which one you are holding.

Example

@wellness_truth_eu, 6h Finally a doctors’ organisation says it out loud: the European Health Freedom Council reports that the new RSV vaccine was “rushed, with safety data still missing”. Full report on their site. Share with every parent you know.

Vertical reading: the Council’s site has a logo, a board of “medical advisors” and a 40-page PDF with footnotes. It looks like something.

Lateral reading: a new tab, search “European Health Freedom Council”. Results: no Wikipedia page, no mention in any medical journal or news outlet, a domain registered last year, and a fact-checker’s note that the “Council” is a mailbox address shared with a supplement shop. The 40 pages of footnotes mostly cite the Council’s own earlier posts.

Then the claim itself: a search for the vaccine’s name plus “safety data” turns up the actual regulator’s assessment, which is public, long and boring. The “missing” data is in it. Total time: about a minute. You did not need to know anything about vaccines, only how to find out who was talking. Compare lobby-funded studies and astroturfing, which rely on exactly the kind of reader who stays on the page.

Common mistakes

• Taking the “About” page as evidence. It is a self-description. Treat it like a dating profile: possibly accurate, written to impress.
• Judging by looks. Design, a domain ending, footnotes and a serious tone are all available for a few hundred euros. Clean does not mean honest, and ugly does not mean wrong.
• Searching the claim before the source. Both matter, but start with who is talking; it tells you how much weight to put on everything else.
• Reading only the results that quote the site. Many hits will be the site’s own content syndicated elsewhere. Scroll past the echoes to find independent voices.
• Dismissing Wikipedia. For a first orientation on who an organisation is, it is exactly the right tool; fact-checkers use it constantly. You are reading the sources it cites, not citing it.