Lies, damned lies and alternative truth; or, the Moon is not part of Mars - Anne Rooney

Mars — nothing to do with the Moon

There are lies, there are damned lies, and there's a lot of confusion. It's quite hard writing factual books in an age where truth is considered optional, over-rated or even a ridiculous pedantry.

I write a lot of children's non-fiction, a lot of adult non-fiction and some children's fiction. Fiction is currently beset by arguments about what counts as cultural appropriation. I'm not going into those arguments, but they revolve around ownership of story and whose truth should be told by whom. This is not going to be about cultural appropriation, but about truth.

The truth about human history, whether of an individual person or a nation, is partly subjective . There are facts, though they are not always discoverable — how many people died of a plague, how many people attended a president's inauguration ceremony. Then there are causes, which are more complex and open to interpretation: what really caused World War I, why does Trump lie about his inauguration crowd? These are not objective truths; we can discuss them until we agree but we might still be wrong and there is no conclusive proof to be found.

It used to be universally acknowledged that you could get a straightforward fact right or wrong. What was accepted as true might change over time as more is discovered, but it wasn't a matter of opinion. The age of the universe was until this year thought to be 13.77 billion years. New data suggests it might be a billion years younger. But the universe does actually have an age which we could, in theory, discover. People have never liked challenges to what has long been perceived as true. When European scientists first discovered that Earth orbits the Sun rather than the other way round, they were condemned and forbidden to teach this new knowledge as it was seen as a contradiction of the Bible. Consensus reality has a powerful hold, especially when backed up by religious belief. But still, the new truth - or more accurate version, the closer approach to the truth - usually takes root. Now, only some rather odd people believe the Sun moves round the Earth.

Let's take that small faction as an example as that belief is less contentious than some others we could use. There is no emotional investment in what celestial bodies do, as there is in, say, the anti-vax position or whether climate change is 'real'. It is clearly demonstrable with mathematics that the planets orbit the Sun, and if you don't like mathematics, you can go and sit in a space station and watch. There is no argument to be had. Yet some people prefer to believe something demonstrably untrue. Why? Is it because they don't like being told what to think? They don't 'trust' science, even though they have no better way of judging for themselves? They prefer to feel special (humans are at the centre, despite not having existed for the first 4.4 billion years of the solar system)? They are just uneducated and think it's a matter of opinion?

The latest nonsensical bit of untruth is Trump claiming yesterday that the Moon is part of Mars. Reader, the Moon is categorically not, and never has been, part of Mars. Some Americans will presumably now believe this. Some American children will grow up believing it (unless he backtracks today, of course). When did objective truth become a matter of opinion, or of choice? When did it become OK to spout nonsense? We are seeing some of the impact in the 'lies on the bus' issue. It's going to get a lot worse if truth has no perceived value. How can we proceed with education, or with writing factual books, in this kind of climate? 

It is an odd world in which fiction demands more truth (the 'true' experience of the right kind of writer) and fact demands less. I waiver between thinking my job is utterly pointless now and thinking it is needed more than ever. Maybe both are true at the same time. Writers and educators must keep the flame of the Enlightenment alive so that fire of rational enquiry can be rekindled later. How much later, though?

Telling the truth in an age of lies

NOT how a Diplodocus walked

The USA presidential election, like the Brexit referundum, has seen lying enter mainstream politics as just another tool. It doesn't seem to be considered reprehensible, it doesn't seem that truth is particularly valued over lies, or that lies need to be apologised for or even explained away as mistakes. The value of truth and accuracy has never been lower. We are in the age of post-truth politics. The people, Michael Gove told us, have had enough of experts. For a man once charged with overseeing education, that's a damning indictment of the current intellectual climate.

Truth is a slippery thing, but that's no excuse for ignoring it or waving it off with a cheery smile or shrug of the shoulders rather than trying to identify and grasp it. I currently spend my days reading academic articles on paleontology and on neuroscience because I want the books I write to be as accurate as possible. It matters whether dinosaurs swallowed gastroliths (they didn't) and how the plaques that cause Alzheimer's are formed (by the build-up of amyloid proteins between synapses). It would be easier - and possibly more entertaining - to perpetuate the myth of dinosaurs swallowing stones to help break up their food. It would give us a nice lift-the-flap look inside a dinosaur's stomach. Just as it would be nice if voting for Brexit produced a massive influx of money for the NHS or if there really was no one with greater respect for women than Donald Trump. But just because these things would be nice doesn't mean they are true, and doesn't mean we should deceive people into thinking they are true, or that we shouldn't care whether they are true or not.

Thankfully, truth is still valued in books, especially fin books or children. Children have to trust us - the adults who have control of the flow of information - as they have no way of verifying facts for themselves. But how much is that trust eroded in a world where truth has no civic value? What is that trust worth? Is it, in fact, turned into a form of gullibility? The quest for accuracy, which used to be taken for granted, has slipped down the agenda and down the value-scale. Now, if something is stated on the web or in the media enough times, it's considered true, or at least true enough, or at least not worth examining. If I tell people I research books for children using academic journals, they are surprised. Some think it's overkill, others think it's noble but amusing. It's neither - it's just how the job should be done. Children deserve the trust they place in us - authors, teachers, parents - to be respected and rewarded with truth.

Giordano Bruno: 'Truth does not change because it is, or is not,
believed by a majority of the people.'

Science, unlike belief, makes progress through acknowledging its mistakes and overturning theories and paradigms that are not supported by new evidence. So yes, the truth shifts. Once you would be laughed at (at best) for believing the Earth goes round the Sun or that diseases can be caused by living things too small to see. Seeing this progression towards truth along a path littered with errors validates not only truth itself but the endeavour to discover truth. It spurs young people on to be curious, and bravely curious, because getting it wrong doesn't matter. Getting it wrong, indeed, is often a necessary step towards getting it right. But to do any of that, you have to value truth and be able to discern it. Current political and civic life does not set a good example to young people. They see adults lying to each other, accepting and acting on those lies without asking for or looking for evidence, or - if Gove is to be believed - even wanting to see any evidence. How will we raise the next generation of scientists, critical thinkers, philosophers, lawyers or even vloggers if they don't see any value in truth? ('Put this rat poison on your face; it makes you skin whiter...' Yes, but.)

And finally... there is not empirical truth in all areas. There is no single right way to govern a nation (as far as we know) and no objective answer to whether, say, abortion is wrong. As a society, we arrive at the answers we will accept through debate and discussion, through examining evidence and hearing and assessing different views. The skill of listening and assessing is one our children will not learn, as they have no model for it (and even the National Curriculum does not value it). If we demonise experts - and how well did that path serve China and Cambodia? - and our political 'debates' consist only of shouting the same thing louder and louder and launching personal attacks, how will our children learn to value learning, or to discuss, debate and negotiate? When the response to an opinion you disagree with is to blank it or to meet it with a personal attack, or trolling, there is no space in which discussion can take place.  When did it become OK to assume people are acting out of malice rather then ignorance if we disagree with their views or actions? If we don't treat other views with respect and dignity, and treat those who hold them with courtesy, we make it impossible to keep an open mind and then it's impossible to change anyone's mind (even our own). If I think someone is stupid and malicious I won't want to agree with them as that would obviously align me with the stupid and malicious, too. If someone thinks I'm stupid and malicious, I won't be inclined to listen to them or even try to talk to them. This, surely, is not what we want our children to see and think?

I will continue to write 'true' books - non-fiction, books that are not made up, books that are carefully researched and try to present a balanced view where there is doubt and the truth where doubt is minimal. And as it is non-fiction November, please try to reflect on the value of showing children not just the truth, but the value of truth. Before it's too late.


Anne Rooney

But is it true? - by Anne Rooney

We've probably all been asked that of stories, whether stories we have written or stories we are reading or telling to children (or even adults). On one particularly memorable occasion, one of my own children asked 'is it true?' of a story  which she had helped me to make up (though I suppose the lag between invention and publication is so long a child will forget). The story featured two of her friends, which I would not usually do, but they  had just moved into a house with an ancient well and I'd used the well as a time portal. (In the story, not really.) The use of real people in an invented story was too confusing.

We tend to answer 'yes' or 'no' to the question 'is it true?' but the truth is not that simple. Here's Boccaccio, defending fiction against the charge levelled against it by the Catholic Church in the 14th century of it being iniquitous lies:

‘There was never a maundering old woman, sitting with others late of a winter's night at the home fireside, making up tales of Hell, the fates, Ghosts and the like … but did not feel there was a grain of truth in them.’

There is psychological truth in the untruth of stories. But what of the untruth in the supposed truth of information? 

Exobiology and the truth dilemma
in one go

I have been working on exobiology the last few weeks. That's not a thing, really. Or rather, it's entirely conjecture. It's about the life forms that might exist on other planets, including exoplanets (those outside our solar system). We know nothing about it - it's all theorising. And yet the papers I am reading are published in respectable peer-reviewed journals. You can find more detailed accounts of alien life in science fiction stories and films, but of course those are entirely made up. 

The difference between the science fiction and the science non-fiction is hard to pin down. Many science fiction writers do a lot of research, and it's likely that at least some read the exobiology journals. Even if they don't, they think hard about how their alien life-forms might work and what they would look like. The difference, really, is in presentation. Instead of 'alien life-forms might have a biology based around silicon' (unlikely, as it happens), the sci-fi novelist will name the creature and say it has a biology based around silicon. 

There are other dodgy borders between truth and fiction. I have written books about zombies and vampires that are classed as non-fiction because they are about the traditional beliefs about these non-existent creatures. So a true book about something that doesn't exist. The contracts include clauses that state everything has to be true and accurate. It's true and accurate that people believe you can make a zombie following a certain procedure, but it's not true and accurate that you actually can. 

In 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for, amongst other things, claiming that the universe is infinite and contains many inhabited planets. That's now a mainstream belief and is supported by many scientists as the most likely state of affairs. Truth shifts.The border between truth and untruth is porous. Truth leaks into fiction - both historical truth and psychological truth - and leaks out of information books, where conjecture and theory have to replace certainty. It's not black and white - not at all. And that's without even considering the subjectivity of 'truth' - that one person's 'true account' of an event is another's misrepresentation. 

Fiction and non-fiction in publishing are two realms supposedly occupied by lies and truth respectively, but that's far too bold a distinction. Some fiction is published in 'non-fiction' lists, including re-tellings of old tales and sometimes early readers - stories sold into schools and as part of reading schemes. They are sold as non-fiction because they are intended to help children develop their skill in reading, rather than being good stories ifor the sake of a good story. (I know, don't even start on that one.) 

Which brings me to the labels fiction and non-fiction. It's silly to describe a huge category (the majority) of published books by what they are not - not invented stories. I have tried saying 'information books', but that sounds dreary and as though they are not there to be enjoyed every bit as much as books that are 'untrue' (fiction). If we went for a week calling fiction 'untrue' books, that might make people pause to think about the negative connotations of the 'non' label. But all books contain truth and all books contain uncertainty, contingency, theory, partiality. So perhaps it's just time to stop trying to use true/mad-up as the way we distinguish between them. Any suggestions for new labels?