Does a statement have to be true to be a fact? When it comes to the difference between facts and opinions, some may argue that facts are merely claims that can be proven true or false. Most dictionaries, however, assert that in order for an assertion to be a fact, it must be true. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Can Facts Be False?”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Eric from Dallas.
Hi, Eric, welcome.
Hey there, what’s up, buddy?
Oh, I’m just having a great time here. I was going to school with my little girl who’s eight years old, and she was reading some kind of product package, and she was saying to herself, fact, fact, fact, fact. And I wondered what she was doing.
She said that she was trying to practice identifying facts. And so I asked her, what was that all about? And she said that her teacher had shown her how to identify facts and that they were simply things that could either be proven true or false. And so I probed a little further, and I found out that for her, a fact was simply something that could be true or false because they were doing a section on learning about facts versus opinion.
So the teacher, when you say she, it’s the teacher who believed that facts could be true or false.
Exactly.
You talked to the teacher?
I did, and it didn’t go so well.
Oh, really?
Yeah, because I then went to the dictionaries that I had. I went to Webster’s, and American Heritage 5th Edition just came out. And so I looked at that, and I noticed that, you know, down the list, that apparently, you know, in American Heritage, around 2C, it said something that is asserted that could either be true or false. But that was down at 2C, as opposed to 1 or 2A.
So I discussed that with her, and she was adamant that this word had changed, and that fact now meant just something that could be true or false.
Oh, this is a bit of a puzzle here. Because on one hand, you’ve got a teacher who needs to simplify things for students.
I was going to say, your daughter is what, third grade?
That’s right.
Yeah. She’s an eight-year-old in third grade classroom. She needs to simplify this because, you know, nuance doesn’t really work at that age, right? We all know that.
Right. Just tell them that maybe you’ll take them to the water park and see what happens. That turns into a yes really fast.
Yeah. So nuance doesn’t really work, so you’ve got to simplify. But on the other hand, it sounds to me as if she’s simplified by hanging on to a much rarer substance of fact, right? Your argument, let me see if I can recap this. Your argument is that, look, a fact is always true. If it’s found out to be false, it is no longer a fact. It’s just a statement or a false assertion.
Exactly, or an assertion.
Exactly. And that’s what I said. And she was adamant. She said, you know, words change their meanings over time. And, you know, you have to say, yes, that’s true.
Yeah, and the other thing is that I think if she’s talking about words changing over time, then she’s talking about the term fact going through this evolution that’s ending up someplace other than where it started out. And I don’t think that’s happening. It doesn’t sound like she’s even teaching that anyway. It sounds like she’s justifying her teaching.
Now, this is all secondhand through you, and I think you’re probably faithfully reporting this. I just would backtrack and say, from my position as a non-educator, I’ve never taught in a classroom, I would think that you would just start with, here’s what a fact is. It’s always true. And if it’s not true, then it’s a false assertion or a false statement.
So she needs to just talk about statements that you then grade as either being fact or not fact, rather than talking about facts that you grade as true or not true. Sounds like she started out with the wrong word to start with. Why does she not use statement or assertion?
Statement or assertion. Neither one of those words is that difficult for an 8-year-old.
Yeah. Well, in this particular section, my understanding in the curriculum, they were teaching the difference between opinion and fact.
Well, yeah. Yeah, I think that would make perfect sense to teach to third graders.
Right, and if it’s not a fact, then it becomes something else, but it’s not a fact. Once you know that it’s not a fact, it’s not a fact anymore, and you should stop calling it a fact.
We’re with you, Eric.
I feel better.
Okay.
You’re the first and last teacher, Eric. Keep educating, Eric.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
But I appreciate the position that the teacher’s in.
Oh, yes. I really do. Because I know teachers across the country, and a lot of times they’ve got this suspect material in front of them that was picked by a state board or a school board, or they had no control over it. And what are they going to do, renounce it in front of their classroom? No, they have to buy into it and teach it the best that they can.
Call us with your language disputes, 877-929-9673.
It’s not often I find myself taking issue with a position taken by either of the show’s hosts, but I’m a little upset that you advised your caller to complain to the teacher that she’s simply wrong to use “fact” to include false statements.
What you’ve really got hold of here is a further teachable moment: the student can now learn about “formalism”. Asserting that words mean exactly what they’re defined to mean before an exercise begins, no matter what meaning the same word might have in another context, will serve her in good stead in math. This will protect a later teacher from having to knock heads with some kid who insists that “zero is so natural” or “the square root of two is not a real number!”
Back when I was in 4th or 5th grade in 1980, I remember being taught the exact same lesson about facts being any verifiable piece of information vs. opinion. What’s remarkable is the fact that I remember that lesson clearly – in my opinion a great lesson that helps kids think. To this day, especially when talking politics with special relatives or friends, I often say “yes, those are your facts, but I can prove them wrong,” and I always think back to that lesson 30 years ago.
I also posted this comment as a topic on the Discussion Board. I’d welcome further comments there — https://waywordradio.org/discussion/topics/true-facts-and-false-facts/
I believe that Grant and Martha completely missed the boat on the “fact” question. In the language of reason, logic, rhetoric, religion and, most significantly, law and science, the teacher was absolutely correct about what “fact” means. It means a statement that can be proven to be true or false. It is contrasted with things like opinions or beliefs. That means that there are such things as true facts and false facts.
For example, in American defamation law, a person might have a claim for defamation if he or she can show that the defendant has intentionally and publicly made a false defamatory statement of fact. For the plaintiff in such a case to prove this kind of claim, he or she must show elements like this (the specific details might vary depending on the jurisdiction, but they generally follow this pattern):
1. The defendant made a statement of fact (that is, not a statement of opinion or belief).
2. The statement was false.
3. The defendant had the intent to make such a statement.
4. The statement was published (that is, made public).
5. The statement of fact, if believed by members of the public, would tend to harm the plaintiff’s good name or reputation.
Notice that the questions of whether the statement was a statement of fact and whether the statement was false are two separate questions. You can’t be liable for defamation for stating an opinion, only for making a false statement of fact. That’s not a contradiction of terms. It just reflects a meaning of the word “fact” that is relevant to a particular context. And that context is also the operating context when a teacher is educating kids on distinguishing between statements of fact and statements of opinion.
It is particularly relevant that the child in this case was reading a breakfast cereal box, because the distinction between statements of fact and other kinds of statements are relevant to things like advertising, marketing, sales, and product promotion. A lot of advertising is directed at children, especially for things like breakfast cereal, and I believe that the teacher was establishing the grounds for an important lesson about claims made by the sellers of products.
By going through the statements on a box of cereal, and identifying which ones were claims of fact (things that are capable of being proven true or false) and other kinds of statements (say, opinion or puffery) this child was engaging in a very sophisticated act of rational analysis.
A prominent example of this important meaning of the word “fact” is reflected in the works of the late Christopher Hitchens, the political polemicist and crusading atheist. He is noted for asserting that any statement of belief in a supernatural power or divine creator is a “statement of fact” that must be proven with evidence, and if evidence is not forthcoming, it must be considered to have been a a false statement of fact. This is not a fringe or insignificant meaning of the phrase “statement of fact” or of the word “fact.” It is very important in our society today to understand this kind of assertion and its significance.
Now, it is also important for a child to know the more popular and less specialized meaning of “fact,” that is, “a true fact,” but I think Grant and Martha did a disservice by telling the caller that the teacher had done something wrong in teaching the child this very important definition.
Historically, the word “fact” didn’t mean “true” or “something that was true.” It originally meant something that was “provable to be true.” Which meant it can either be true or false, but as long as there’s a way to prove it, we can consider the statement as a “fact.”
This distinction is very important when teaching what is a fact versus what is an opinion because an opinion can also be true. Pineapple on pizza is delicious. This is true for me and you can’t prove otherwise.
You might also refer to Einstein’s Relativity of Simultaneity to prove that not all facts are “true.”
In the theory, two observers from different POVs will observe the same thing happening but report different observations. A lightning will hit a train and two observers from different frames of reference will record the time at which it hit at different times. Which then is fact and which is opinion? Can both be true and thus both be a fact? Or is only one true and the other is not and is therefore an opinion?
The obvious solution is to classify both as fact, since truth in this sense, changes depending on one’s frame of reference.
Opinions however, never changes. It is always untestable and unprovable. The question of which tastes better, coke or pepsi can never be settled because it will always be subjective. And that’s why the teacher was correct in teaching the child that definition of fact. Because that definition is more useful in screening what is fact from opinion.
Using wordplay to make is seem like they were not wrong. Kind of like “That depends on what the word “it” means”
– Todd Charske