3/7/2015 salon.com: Anti-science advocates are freaking out about Google truth rankings
Google could launch an effort to keep trolls and bad information at bay, with a program that would rank websites according to veracity, and sort results according to those rankings.

Bad idea. Had Google been around in the 19th century such a program would have confirmed the veracity of:

Life could suddenly emerge from inanimate objects - Spontaneous generation
Bad air caused illness - Miasma theory of disease
Draining considerable quantities of blood could cure any ailment - Bloodletting
The universe was static, neither expanding nor contracting - Static universe theory

In addition, such a program borders on censorship and could present results based on what its programmers consider to be "conformity to facts; accuracy". Considering Google's left leaning bias I doubt it could not help but to slant results in favor of its ideology.

I probably search the internet more than most. As a rule I want to read all sides of an issue before forming an opinion. What I don't want is for the first of 75,951,000 results to support the theory that climate change is man made if I search "climate change man made". I did such a search about 10 minutes ago. Of the 12 results on the first page, 3 questioned the man made theory. That's probably about the right ratio. That's what I want to see.

I'm not an anti-science advocate. Science is a good thing. I'm not freaking out about the prospect of Google truth rankings. If I suspect Google search is not providing objective results I'll switch to one of about 5 viable alternative search engines. Should all search engines implement such a "truth rankings" program, I'll put my computers in storage and read a good paper back science fiction novel.

March, 2015