Thus, when a layperson’s riposte to an expert consists of “I read it in the paper” or “I saw it on the news,” it may not mean very much. Indeed, the information may not have come from “the news” or “the paper” at all, but from something that only looks like a news source. More likely, such an answer means “I saw something from a source I happen to like and it told me something I wanted to hear.” At that point, the discussion has nowhere to go; the original issue is submerged or lost in the effort to untangle which piece of misinformation is driving the conversation in the first place.
