On September 21, 2021, a British court sentenced an Egyptian doctor, Hossam Metwally, to 14 years in prison, after convicting him of attempting (1) to poison his partner, by injecting her with narcotic and sedative substances in the context of an exorcism ritual. This came after eight weeks of hearings and investigations. In the case that occupied public opinion in Britain, and Egypt as well.
Over the past five years, Metwally, 61, injected Kelly Wilson, 34, with a variety of medicinal narcotics such as ketamine, propofol and fentanyl, in addition to using a group of "blessed oils" he sprayed on his partner, while reciting verses from the Qur'an, during dozens of times. The sessions she underwent, Wilson ended up in a coma on July 4, 2019, and was on the verge of having an angina pectoris, which required her to be taken to the hospital, hence the case.
Because of the sensitivity of the case, the British judge explained that the rituals that Metwally used with the woman he exploited "have nothing to do with Islamic procedures in place in such cases," but beyond that point, a fundamental question must arise in our minds in contexts such as: Why would he do that? man it?
You might imagine that a charlatan or a charlatan is going to take such sessions using narcotic substances he is not aware of how dangerous they are, but the doctor knows everything about them, their composition, chemistry, how they work, and their movement inside the body.
He accused his partner of being under the control of evil spirits..
A British court sentenced the Egyptian doctor "Hossam Metwally" to 14 years in prison;
For convicting him of injecting his partner with a poisonous substance as part of a “false ritual” to expel the jinn from her pic.twitter.com/Yu6m8VA5CW
— Monitor Network (@RassdNewsN) September 22, 2021
The doctor who answered "yes"
But it is not that easy. Consider, for example, that study (2) that was published about three months ago in the famous “Plus One” journal, which tried to answer a question that seemed obvious at first glance: Is the doctor different from the engineer - for example - when it comes to dealing with With false news about the "Covid-19" pandemic?
In the study conducted by “Sven Gunner” and his team from Martin Luther University in Germany, 8 false news stories about “Covid-19” were shown to 2,000 German citizens divided into four groups, the first group included health care professionals (doctors, for example), and the second included college students The third group included specialists from other professions, and the fourth group included students of other vocational colleges. After that, the abilities of the four groups were measured on patterns of analytical thinking, and then the results of their belief in the false news were examined. The results came to say that there was little difference between health care professionals or students in these areas compared to non-professionals (people in other professions) and students in other colleges that do not study any health care majors, which is the same strange result that we get.
One of the explanations may come from the same study. In addition to examining the cases of false news belief, which showed equality between groups, the analytical thinking tests found a clear direct relationship between analytical abilities and the discrimination of fake news, where individuals - from all groups - who had greater analytical thinking abilities. Better able to discern fake news, regardless of their profession.
The study examined two mechanisms of thinking, the first is the so-called active open thinking (AOT), which means the individual's ability to be free from prejudice and avoid closed thinking and flexibility in thinking, as well as the ability to balance the different evidence presented to him and choose the appropriate evidence regardless of his personal preference.
The second mechanism is cognitive reflexive thinking (CRT), which means a person's tendency to override their incorrect intuition and engage in further thinking and searching to find a correct answer.
A delicious mess of myths
That's why don't be surprised when you meet on Twitter an Iraqi university professor of medicine or an Egyptian doctor who was earlier interested in sex education and see them openly promoting myths, whether about "Covid-19" or any of those fantasy related to alternative medicine, herbal treatment, energy, aura and healing water therapy And the healing touch, medicine here is nothing but a profession, but unfortunately it has not turned into a way of thinking.
In general, when we consider the possible reasons for people's belief in superstitions, charlatans, witchcraft, conspiracy theories and false news, the level of education plays an undeniable role, as usually those with university qualifications are less likely to accept those ideas, but in special cases such as the spread of a global pandemic, with a state of terror. Spread on social media worldwide, stress is affecting more people and more highly educated people are joining the quack herd. In one of the experiments that Daniel Kahneman, a scientist who won a Nobel in economics in his book “Thinking Fast and Slow”, it was proven that our system of thoughtful thinking is affected by many things, such as when you are asked to memorize a number of numbers, the higher this number, the more There is a higher chance of making mistakes.
On the other hand, the world is going through an unprecedented period of political polarization, and studies in this area indicate that being a Republican, for example, in the United States of America, will strongly affect the extent to which you believe false news, conspiracy theories, or myths that support your party team or harm your competitors. In this case, we tend to be tribal, that is, we tend to believe what supports our belonging to our group or party, regardless of the facts.
This brings us back to the Gunner study, which upholds the importance of analytical thinking in our age of fake news and myths, but it seems not to be the only study in this scope. In another study (3) published several years ago in the same journal, researchers examined data from three representative nationwide surveys, each of which included 500-1,000 participants. The aim of the study was to understand how people form their beliefs, and how this may contribute to their acceptance of ideas with little or no coherent evidence to support them.
Participants received 12 optional questions, including choices such as “I trust my intuition to tell me what is true and what is not,” “the evidence is more important than whether I feel something is true” and “the facts are dictated to us by those in power.” The tests also included questions about the relationship between vaccines and autism, and the relationship between human activity and climate change, and the researchers also assessed the respondents' tendency to agree with seven well-known conspiracy theories.
Researchers used the answers to these questions to assess people's belief in intuition, their need for evidence, and their belief that "truth" is a political issue. Through politics and power, they are more likely to stand behind false beliefs or ideas, and those who rely on evidence are less likely to believe those lies.
It happened to me too.. I believe it
In the same context, a study (4) from the University of Glasgow, British, reveals that people with high levels of emotional intelligence are less likely to believe false news and widespread myths. Fabricated and false.
For example, those who believed these falsehoods and myths were characteristic of whether they relied on personal experience ("This has happened to me (or my children) before"), or that they only cared about whether figures were true or not ("A good argument" He uses graphs” or “look at the graphs, they say everything”), and they believed the false news when it matched their previous convictions (“Exactly, that’s what I think”).
Those who refused to believe lies and myths tended to comment on the essay's emotional language ("This is emotional language designed to make you believe"), the evidence ("no evidence", "no facts", "no data"), as well as Questioning sources (“Where is the source? Is it government? Is it a trusted professional scientist?”), and criticize the professionalism of language (“unprofessional language”, “These are opinions, not facts”).
It seems, then, that working on developing people's intellectual skills (such as analytical thinking and emotional intelligence), which research has shown to be possible, may help in developing their abilities to avoid falling into the well of superstition, charlatanism and news lies. He entered the digital age without tools that qualify him to enter this world, so he became addicted, to one degree or another, to myths, false news and conspiracy theories.
Literacy forever
The Internet leads us to another study (5) in this regard, published in the journal Behavioral and information technology. The research team asked 396 people from Indonesia to rate their skills and years of experience on the Internet, as well as their attitudes towards information validation. circulated on the web and their reliability, including the number of times they shared information without fact-checking.
The results came to say that factors such as age, social class, and gender were not clearly associated with people believing false news, while skills such as media and information literacy played the largest role in identifying misinformation, along with information verification skills (such as searching for some new information in fake news on Google before sharing it immediately), and it turns out that those who have a strong belief in the reliability of information online are more likely to share it without verification.
Information literacy is a term that expresses the ability to find, evaluate, organize, use and communicate information in all its various forms, particularly in situations that require decision-making, problem-solving, or knowledge acquisition. .
Media literacy means practices that allow people to access, critically evaluate and understand its impact on them regardless of the information or facts presented in it. Media literacy education aims to promote awareness of the influence of media and create an active attitude toward media consumption. This point reflects on a previous report by the author entitled "The dark side of the TED Talks... Are they really ideas worth spreading?"
School and university students can receive educational curricula that include information and media literacy courses, as well as critical and analytical thinking techniques.
As long as the term “literacy” in our societies means reading and writing, then the computer appeared and we talked about computer literacy, then here we are in front of a new type of illiteracy in the current era, and it does not seem to us that this type of education is a choice or a luxury, but rather a necessity for an ordinary life. In a world saturated with lies.
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Sources
The Egyptian doctor, Hossam Metwally, was imprisoned for injecting his partner with narcotic substances during "the expulsion of the jinn sessions."
Infodemics: Do healthcare professionals detect corona-related false news stories better than students?
Epistemic beliefs' role in promoting misperceptions and conspiracist idea
Detecting fake news on Facebook: The role of emotional intelligence
Recognise misinformation and verify before sharing: a reasoned action and information literacy perspective