# Reliability of Snopes **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 28, 2013, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924 "2013-04-28T18:16:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tequila\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a6a055/32.png) [@Tequila\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tequila_Party)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/21 "2013-04-29T14:34:43Z")
If you traverse their message boards much, they also have a section for the most _interesting_ letters to the editor, if you will. They seem to be about evenly split (or they were when I was last reading there) between those that were outraged at the liberal bias and those that were outraged at the conservative bias. So much so, that it was pretty funny how one’s perception colored things. Personally, I felt they were slightly left leaning, but not in a way that interfered with their job. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/22 "2013-04-29T14:38:16Z")
Snopes is extremely balanced and accurate, except for those times when I \*know \*they are wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/23 "2013-04-29T14:41:24Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Could you show a couple of examples for us to campare? No, sorry. A couple of examples would have zero probative value. You would need a very comprehensive study to prove anything. It’s just my sense. It was a subjective answer to a subjective question, but it’s also worth keeping in mind for those who think that Snopes’ ostensible focus on facts precludes them from being biased. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/24 "2013-04-29T14:45:04Z")
Since you appear to be a professor or researcher at Miskatonic University (Go Cephalopods!), one would expect you to question the veracity of a rival source of data. I would do so, in your place, as well. After all, it isn’t all as it seems, is it Doctor? ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/25 "2013-04-29T14:52:45Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > No, sorry. > > A couple of examples would have zero probative value. You would need a very comprehensive study to prove anything. > > It’s just my sense. It was a subjective answer to a subjective question, but it’s also worth keeping in mind for those who think that Snopes’ ostensible focus on facts precludes them from being biased. Look in the “Politics” section. Notice how many stories that make prominent Republicans look bad have been debunked. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/26 "2013-04-29T15:02:22Z")
I’ve noticed a big red flag when it comes to potentially racist UL’s. There are any number of UL’s on their site along the lines of “such & such celebrity is secretly racist and hates some other race/ethicity.” Almost without exception, Snopes dismisses these rumors out of hand, with the reasoning that it would be bad for business to turn away potential customers. Even a grade-school student can see that this thinking is laughably naiive. That doesn’t mean that any of these rumors are true, but the logic used to dismiss them is rather questionable. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/27 "2013-04-29T15:14:40Z")
I get all those stupid conservative emails from my parents. One of them was full of the usual bullshit, but at the bottom it said something like ‘This is all true! You can even see it on Snopes!’, and it had a link to the Snopes article for the email. Which said that the email was complete bullshit. That one I didn’t get. Why link to something that completely disproves your argument? ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/28 "2013-04-29T15:17:27Z")
Because people don’t click on links. ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/29 "2013-04-29T15:20:50Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > Since you appear to be a professor or researcher at Miskatonic University (Go Cephalopods!), one would expect you to question the veracity of a rival source of data. I would do so, in your place, as well. After all, it isn’t all as it seems, is it Doctor? Never trust anyone else’s research completely, even if that “other” seems to be yourself leaving carved messages in lower Devonian siltstones that you yourself uncovered. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/30 "2013-04-29T15:22:29Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > I’ve noticed a big red flag when it comes to potentially racist UL’s. There are any number of UL’s on their site along the lines of “such & such celebrity is secretly racist and hates some other race/ethicity.” Almost without exception, Snopes dismisses these rumors out of hand, with the reasoning that it would be bad for business to turn away potential customers. An example, please? ---
**Author:** ![Quimby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/22d042/32.png) [@Quimby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quimby)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2013, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/31 "2013-04-29T17:04:40Z")
Snopes generally sources everything they cite. While I am sure they have made mistakes on occasion, the only time I see them get dismissed out right is when it was by Right Wingers who desperately wanted something that was false be true. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/32 "2013-04-30T03:14:12Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > ISTM that Snopes has a liberal bias. > > In discussing the veracity of various assertions about the Obama administration and campaigns, they seem to veer from their general mission to assess the facts into a more subjective editorializing about how what might seem like negative facts are really different when you consider them in context etc., to a greater extent than they do when discussing similar issues about Republicans. Is it not at least as likely that Obama is more frequently subjected to people taking things out of context? I’m not sure “this is out of context” is “editorializing,” unless you mean as opposed to simply saying it’s false. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/33 "2013-04-30T13:33:18Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > Is it not at least as likely that Obama is more frequently subjected to people taking things out of context? > > I’m not sure “this is out of context” is “editorializing,” unless you mean as opposed to simply saying it’s false. Agree with this. There are quite a lot of Obama-related rumors on the snopes site that bear no relationship to fact whatever; they’re someone’s wishful thinking. Cites: I’m thinking of things like “Obama didn’t attend the Army-Navy game, first president to ever skip it!” (see [The Obama Trifecta | Snopes.com](http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/trifecta.asp)) and “He didn’t REALLY go to Columbia, what’s the deal here?” (see [Barack Obama at Columbia | Snopes.com](http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/columbia.asp)). These are just examples. There really are a ton of others, though. These are not difficult to debunk, as you see if you read the articles. But placing them in context is important. For instance, here’s one about Obama not placing a wreath at Arlington cemetery on Memorial Day 2010: [Did President Obama Decline to Lay Wreaths on Memorial Day? | Snopes.com](http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/memorialday.asp). The claim is that Obama is the only president in modern times who failed to do this. Obama indeed spent the weekend on vacation. But the article points out that many other Memorial Days didn’t have presidents placing wreaths at the cemetery; GHWB for example never did it in his four years in office. So there’s a grain of truth in there (Obama didn’t), but it’s swallowed up by the greater inaccuracy (in fact, Obama’s behavior here was pretty much in line with what other presidents did). In contrast, there are relatively few claims like this on snopes about the Bushes, Palin, etc., and many of those are pretty simple to debunk. See [Rick Santorum: Being Female Is a Mental Disorder | Snopes.com](http://www.snopes.com/politics/santorum/female.asp), for instance, where the claim comes from a satirical website. No need to go into detail on that. And where there are nuances, as in [Books Banned by Sarah Palin | Snopes.com](http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/bannedbooks.asp), it seems that snopes does the same sort of putting-it-in-context deal with conservative politicians as it does with Obama. No, I’m not doing a full-blown study of this, and I know about the plural of anecdote. But I think if you look at the individual entries on snopes, you’ll see a significant difference in the overall type of claims made, which makes it reasonable to respond in different ways. ---
**Author:** ![LibrarySpy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f9ae1b/32.png) [@LibrarySpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LibrarySpy)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/34 "2013-04-30T18:35:16Z")
Back in the 1990s, I found them to have a strong anti-homosexual bias in their editorializing (lots of hand-waving), but going through the articles, it seems like a lot of that has been stripped out and now the articles are dry and factual. A couple even reference being heavily edited in 2000. My favorite article is Halloween Poisonings, which makes a great distinction between scare pranks and murders: [Poisoned Halloween Candy | Snopes.com](http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp) And now I go insane at Halloween in protest of scaremongering urban legends. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/35 "2013-04-30T21:31:09Z")
> [@Lacunae Matata](#): > > Lately, I’ve been chastised by a couple of friends, who seem to believe that Barbara and David Mikkelson are some sorts of liberal operatives, and that their website leans to the far left. I would counter that maybe, just maybe, a disproportionate amount of the bunkum that circulates on the internet leans to the right, so a site that picks it apart is going to seem “anti-conservative”. I’m not sure why glurge and shock-horror email chain letters tend to be so overwhelmingly religious and Republican in their outlook. I’m sure there’s a whole research grant worth of work to be done there… ---
**Author:** ![KRC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/45deac/32.png) [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2013, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924/36 "2013-05-01T04:53:54Z")
Not necessarily politcal unless you considered typhus’s effect on human history, but I had no problem disagreeing with Snopes on the matter–he said something about typhus which I believed was wrong and I cited the book **Rats, Lice, and History** by Hans Zinnser and pointed out why I thought he was wrong. No problem, no getting kicked out for disagreeing. While I agree the board leans liberal you can speak your mind and not just about typhus. (And I no longer remember why we had a thread on that.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reliability-of-snopes/656924.md?page=1)