“It’s not enough to have evidence, you have to be able to draw good conclusions. Most people don’t know how to do that”. Dr. Oleg Maltsev
The Internet and social media have changed the way we experience the world around us. With so many sources of information, it can be difficult to keep track of what is real and what is fake, not only online but also in real life.
Increasingly, those who create misinformation make it difficult to tell from authentic information. Sometimes, even well-established news organizations carry stories based on false information gathered through social media and coming from unreliable sources.
It is easy to form suspicions that a particular story might be inauthentic, but it is far more difficult to prove this. Working with evidence is crucial to responsible journalism and to combating fake news. The average person does not give fact-checking or testing by evidence the importance it deserves. Often, the readers of media and social media content, online and offline, do not know how to evaluate evidence or establish criteria of proof in the affected spheres. When this is the case, the person does not have the skills or knowledge to distinguish between authentic and inauthentic information. Even if they rely on well-established sources, they are utterly dependent on these sources for their information and worldview, and will often be affected by fake news designed to manipulate them [1]. This leads to the important question: How can we distinguish reliable information from disinformation in the twenty-first century?
In August 2018, the Research Institute of World Martial Art Traditions and Criminalistic Research on Weapon Handling released the book “Dokazukha”. The book is written by experts on the topic, historian and martial arts practitioner Dr. Oleg Maltsev, Candidate of Psychological Sciences, and lawyer Yevgeniya Tarasenko. [2]
The book details the general pattern of empirical proof. It demonstrates and presents the problems involved in establishing a specific regime of proof in a given discipline. It describes the techniques of proof which can be used across a wide range of cases. It also discusses what kinds of things are not provable and never will be. The process of proof in advocacy, journalism, and science is described. Special attention should be paid to the chapter about proof in journalism, taking into consideration the increasing flow of information, the rise of information warfare, and the penetration of the Internet to all spheres of life. The so-called methods of proof used in religion to justify belief are also examined. Specific examples from practice are given, showing the application of general and special patterns of proof.
“Dokazucha” is the first book in a series of books about the scientific problems of advocacy at the intersection of such sciences as criminalistics, psychology, and sociology.
Materials on the subject:
1. Granite of Science — Scientific and popular journal
2. International Schicksalsanalyse Community Research Institute
