This post summarizes a Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) report suggesting that fact-checkers more reliably assess article than professional hostorians and Stanford students. The assumptions going in were absurd: ""Historians sleuth for a living... Evaluating sources is absolutely essential to their professional practice. And Stanford students are our digital future. We expected them to be experts." Anyhow, the fact-checkers used this one weird trick: checking other sources. "The fact checkers read laterally, meaning they would quickly scan a website in question but then open a series of additional browser tabs, seeking context and perspective from other sites. In contrast, the authors write, historians and students read vertically, meaning they would stay within the original website in question to evaluate its reliability."
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