But it is as if Snopes carefully sets out the reasoning, evidence and sources used to reach its comnclusions. Which means that you can look at the evidence and decide whether you wish to come to a different conclusion.

Do you?

Except the site specifically tries to debunk incorrect narratives.

So like any e.g. conspiracy theorist site out there?

They too try to "debunk incorrect narratives" (as they see it).

Why trust some random non-expert volunteers running a site and their citations (which could be biased).

At least they make an effort to support their arguments with some research. Calling them non-expert volunteers is prejudging them before even considering their position and determining whether it is valid or not by providing supporting or opposing citations.

Or maybe we are not prejudging enough.

"If an organization like Snopes feels it is ok to hire partisan employees who have run for public office on behalf of a particular political party and employ them as fact checkers where they have a high likelihood of being asked to weigh in on material aligned with or contrary to their views, how can they reasonably be expected to act as neutral arbitrators of the truth?"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...

Or maybe we are just focusing on who is weighing in on matters instead of measuring it ourselves.

We went from

"Except the site specifically tries to debunk incorrect narratives"

to

"employees who have run for public office on behalf of a particular political party and employ them as fact checkers"

I think we achieved something important here, in spite of it all.

I've stopped reading all those "fact check" web sites. They seem to be literalists who can't hear the actual meaning of things being said. Everything is just about measurements while ignoring reality. (Now that I think about it, that is also a common problem to technical people too. Failing to recognize the shortcomings of data and measurements.)

>They seem to be literalists who can't hear the actual meaning of things being said. Everything is just about measurements while ignoring reality.

"Facts" are about literal, objective, measurable reality. If it depends on a subjective interpretation and reading between the lines, then it isn't a fact.

Howard Zinn pointed out that History is always biased. In my own work, I've noticed that Machine Learning is always biased. Basically, any historian picks out which facts to discuss, and is not immune from social pressures when they interpret those facts. Similarly, after running enough machine learning algorithms, I realized that the features measured, the way they are measured, and their relationship to other features is considered "factual raw data" - yet it is the very essence of subjective while often ignoring the greater and more important reality.

>"Facts" are about literal, objective, measurable reality. If it depends on a subjective interpretation and reading between the lines, then it isn't a fact.

In physics, chemistry, math, etc. facts are the order of the day, yes.

But raw facts are few and far between in human affairs and even less so in politics.

When people say something in non-hard-science domains, it more often than not depends on a "subjective interpretation", and depending on their phrasing, hidden motives, and eloquence might also need some "reading between the lines" or some charitable interpretation.

Nerds applying Vulcan-style logic to such claims just confuse matters more.

>Nerds applying Vulcan-style logic to such claims just confuse matters more.

I don't see Snopes doing that, though. I see them making an argument based on evidence and (in the specific case related the linked article) not even making an absolute claim about it at the end.

The people applying "Vulcan-style logic" are those who dismiss sites like Snopes out of hand as being politically biased, or propagandist, and therefore entirely useless.

Sadly a necessity of the way the culture wars are fought - everything has to be airtight or people will denounce you as a liar.