Not all Facts are True

To call something a fact is, presumably, to make a claim that it is true.

This isn’t a problem for many things, although defending such a claim can be harder than you think.

What we think are facts — that is, those things we think are true — can end up being wrong despite our most honest commitment to genuine inquiry.

For example, is red wine good or bad for you? And was there a dinosaur called the brontosaurus or not?

The Harvard researcher Samuel Arbesman points out these examples and others of how facts change in his book The Half Life of Facts.

It’s not only that facts can change that is a problem.

While we might be happy to consider it a fact that Earth is spherical, we would be wrong to do so because it’s actually a bit pear-shaped.

Thinking it a sphere, however, is very different from thinking it to be flat.

Peter Ellerton, University of Queensland, Australia, argues not all facts are true in this Op-Ed piece in Australian NBC blog.