Glossary
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Fabrication | Scientific fraud. Making up data, results, source materials, or methodologies and recording or reporting them as real. Public Trust |
| Fact-Checking | The systematic verification of claims against reliable evidence, carried out by journalists, independent organizations and researchers. Science Misinformation |
| Fake / Corrupt Experts | Relying on unqualified individuals or those with conflicts of interest to cast doubt on legitimate scientific consensus. Science General |
| False Balance | Media coverage that presents a fringe view as equal to a scientific consensus, giving the public a misleading impression that experts are evenly divided. Also called 'bothsidesism'. Antiscience |
| False Equivalence | A logical fallacy in which one assumes or asserts that two things are the same or equal when, while alike in some ways, they are not sufficiently similar to be considered equivalent. Antiscience |
| False Flag | A false flag in political interference is a covert operation or staged event designed to deceive the public into believing that an action was carried out by a specific rival, group, or nation, while concealing the true perpetrator's identity. Political Interference |
| Falsifiability | Karl Popper's theory of falsification posits that for a theory to be considered genuinely scientific, it must be testable and refutable. Rather than trying to prove theories right, Popper argued that science progresses by making bold predictions and actively trying to prove them wrong through empirical observation. Science General |
| Falsification | Scientific fraud. Manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing/omitting data so the research is inaccurately represented. Public Trust |
| Feedback Mechanisms | Factors which increase or amplify (positive feedback) or decrease (negative feedback) the rate of a process. An example of positive climatic feedback is the ice-albedo feedback. Climate Change Denial |
| Filter Bubbles | The state of intellectual isolation that occurs when web search algorithms selectively guess what information a user would like to see based on past behavior, locking out consensus scientific views. Science Misinformation |