Fact or opinion

I saw a study online that showed that many Americans struggle to tell the difference between fact and opinion. I didn't record the location of this study, so I can't provide many details. When I saw it, there were two thoughts that came into my mind.


The most obvious thought was that the number was way too high. Opinions should not be accepted as fact, but there are apparently far too many people who can't tell the difference. In those situations, people are likely to mindlessly accept the opinions that are shared.

I should have known this was a problem. Before Trump's election, I read an over-the-top opinion piece from the corrupt Associated Press about how everything Trump said was racist. I forget which website I saw this on, but it included commenting. One comment criticized Republicans for not being able to handle the facts. The article was completely devoid of any factual content. To make matters worse, nobody called out this obvious mistake.

Even more concerning was the either-or implications of fact versus opinion. Very little in the real world is 100% fact or 100% opinion. I didn't see any sample questions, but I have to wonder about the study's legitimacy. I suspect that they focused on definitive facts and definitive opinions instead of anything in a gray area.

Technically speaking, I can counter the idea of a statement being a fact or opinion with one obvious alternative, lies. I could also bring up questions. The biggest concern is that facts and opinions are frequently woven together. An overwhelming majority of news articles contain both facts (or lies) and opinions. You can't look through articles and truly establish them as fact or opinion.

I'm not just talking about articles. Even a single sentence can contain both. I've used this example before, but it works very well in this case. Look at the following sentence.

C-SPAN established that Barack Obama was the 12th best president in American history.

That sentence includes a fact, a lie, a collective opinion, and two personal opinions. Let me break these down for you.

Fact
In a poll from C-SPAN, Obama was legitimately listed as our 12th best president

Lie
The poll was sufficient to establish the value. This would mean that we can treat it as fact. Presidential ranking is actually subjective. You can't establish something subjective as fact.

Collective opinion
The methodology of the poll was subjective in nature and essentially measured the overall opinions of a group. There was absolutely no objectivity to this measure.

Personal opinion
C-SPAN is a trustworthy source worth mentioning. Does anyone honestly believe that someone would push the results of a poll from Pathological Liars Anonymous?

Personal opinion
The results are realistic. If we couldn't personally imagine Obama being our 12?th best president, we would have dismissed rather than shared the results.