US Airlines

Here's a scam that has been around a while that shows the value of fact checking. It could be a good lesson to use with middle school learners or older.

The scam starts when a letter arrives at your house. I would provide a copy for the students. Here's a link with a scanned copy of the letter I received, with some personal information blocked out. If you duplicate the letter, you may want to take out my information altogether and replace it with something more personal for the students.

There are three parts to the mailer: the cover of the envelope, the award notification instructions and a check issued for $1,400.

Before you do any searching online, ask the students to evaluate the credibility of the award letter. "Based on what you see here, is there a good enough reason for Carl to call the 800 number?"  A number of potential Red Flags can be spotted, including no return address, the check is made out to US Airlines and there's a deadline to respond.

Using the Baloney Detection Kit (BDK) questions, students could identify questions that would be good to ask in evaluating the truthfulness of the letter's claims.  For example, Number 4 pops out: "is this the way the world works (does the offer sound too good to be true)?" Well, sometimes there are contests with pretty good prizes and I may have entered something unawares, so that question alone isn't quite enough to convince me it's not a bonafide offer.

Number five, on the other hand, is a better question. I must not be the only person to get a letter like this. I wonder if someone has already looked into this. Maybe someone else called the 800 number, has written about it online and will save me the trouble.

This requires fact checking.

Even without looking for other opinions about the letter, there are significant clues to query. This is where students may have problems, since they don't seem to have a good grasp as to what makes a powerful fact checking query. See what keywords they suggest. The best keywords are US Airlines.  You could also select a phrase from the award notification and query that.

There is no company called US Airlines, however there are plenty of results for US airlines (not a proper noun), so students have to read the search results to tell the difference.

As part of the results, there are plenty of US Airlines scam results. Here's where you will find the answer to BDK #5. These are good to skim -- you will find scanned copies of other peoples' letters, along with descriptions of what happened when they called the 800 number. Unlike most of the letters cited, mine was machine addressed--not hand written--the signature on the check is a different name and the 800 number is different. But the form of the letter is 95% the same.

Students need to encounter real examples of incredible information that will eventually reach their front door. Best to be prepared with good questions and the ability to fact check.

Baloney Detection Kit

The Baloney Detection Kit is described in a 14 minute video from the producers of Skeptic Magazine.

According to the authors, the kit is a 'scientific' guide to encountering new information. Here are the suggested questions to guide an investigation before acting on information.

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2. Does the source make similar type claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by someone else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence (or just negative evidence)?
9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

These all add up to the need to look thoughtfully at information from a variety of objective perspectives. 

I find that there are other ways to group these questions:

Source: 

• Who is the author?
• Has the author written on this topic before?
• Are personal beliefs driving the claim?  (evidence of bias)

Content:

• How does this information fit with the way the world (and rules of science) works?
• Where does the majority of evidence point?
• Is the evidence all negative?
• Does the new theory explain as much as the old theory?

External References:

• Have the claims been verified by someone else?
• Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?

If you are examining information that is not purporting to be a new theory or scientific claim--e.g., a request for money from a friend who's allegedly been robbed while traveling in a foreign country--then most of these questions are no longer relevant (or helpful).

In the case of the email scam, two questions remain important:

Who is the alleged author (identified by name) and where does most of the evidence point?  You have to know the individual pretty well in this case, including the likelihood that person is out of the country.  

The question about the way the world works isn't helpful since there's always a first time for everything.  If this is the first time you've heard from this friend about this type of situation, then question two--by itself--would help support the request for funds.  I'll leave you to think about the remaining questions.

Simply asking questions is insufficient. Some research is required. When I got a similar message from a daughter-in-law, I did two things: I wrote to her to see if she would confirm  the message, and (not waiting for an answer) I searched online for similar emails (question 3 above: has anyone else made the same claim?). I got the answer to the latter before I heard back from my daughter-in-law. Plenty of people were getting similar emails from friends and relatives.