The Educational Shield: Navigating Truth in a Post-Fact World

Introduction

In the modern era, we are often told we live in a "post-fact" world—a landscape where emotion, repetition, and tribalism frequently override empirical evidence. What to do? The words of the philosopher Bertrand Russel come to mind in his message to future generations (1959): "When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: "What are the facts, and what is the  truth that the facts bear out?" Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think could have beneficial social effects, if it were believed." 

He insisted in his message to future generations to make a second point: "The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple. I should say: Love is wise, hatred  is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact, that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way. And if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet. More about this second point in another article.

Such is the reputation for hate speech, lying and misrepresenting facts of the current (and maybe last) President of the USA, Donald Trump, that you wonder why he would bother with facts at all. 

The Economist cover 23 Jan: deserved ridicule

Due to my training as economic historian, what I found most upsetting in his speech at Davos the 21st of January, were these grains of truth in some of the economic statistics he presented, not his preposterous misrepresentation of history on Greenland, nor his mental decline. 

The Nazi Minister of Propoganda, Josef Goebbels called this the "principle of plausibility" or selective truth-telling, involved constructing arguments from credible snippets or verifiable facts drawn from diverse sources, then embedding them within broader narratives of deception. By anchoring lies to isolated truths—like accurate economic data or historical events—propagandists created an "illusion of veracity," exploiting people's tendency to generalize trust from partial accuracy. Even only 10% or 20% of true statement is enough to create the illusion of veracity. In combination with the effect of repeating lies long enough so that they become accepted as facts (e.g. the 2020 election being stolen). The true statements, however, should never be more than 50% in order to raise suspicion and invite further scrutiny (Tella et al., 2011).

Here we used Gemini 3.0 Deep research feature on a transcript of his speech to identify the facts in his speech, which on the whole was a bombastic misrepresentation of his own achievements.

For students and lifelong learners, this post-truth environment is not merely confusing; it is a minefield. However, as educators and advocates for learning, we must return to a fundamental observation: proper education is the ultimate protection for the learner against the untruths and half-truths often heard in post-fact world. It takes a little effort, though, to find the facts, and thanks to these new generation of reasining LLMs and their Deep Research function, it is quicker than it once was. My point here is though that the effort must be made due to this 'illusion of veracity" effect, that can make gross misrepresentation sound true or plausible. It is probably better to clear up any confusion in your mind immediately, rather than wait for the professional fact checkers, such a politifact.com, to publish their results.

Education, at its most potent, is not a collection of dates and formulas to be memorized. It is a cognitive toolkit—a forensic lens through which we can view the world. When we talk about "macroeconomic literacy" or "critical media consumption," we are talking about the difference between a citizen who is easily manipulated by a charismatic speech and a citizen who can pause, analyze, and verify.

The Davos Case Study: A Lesson in Real-Time Literacy

To understand why this "educational shield" is so necessary, we need only look at the recent headlines from the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos. On January 21, the world watched as Donald Trump delivered a sweeping address claiming his first 12 months back in the White House resulted in an economy where "growth is exploding" and "inflation has been defeated."

Table 1: Forensic Audit Truth-Value Verdicts: selected quotes

Quote/Claim from Speech	Topic	Official Data Source & Value	Variance (%)	Verdict	Context/Notes
"Europe is in a total depression. They are at minus 2% growth."	Eurozone GDP	Eurostat (Q4 2025 Flash Est): +0.8% YoY [1]	N/A	Factually Incorrect	While EU growth is lagging the US significantly, it is positive. The subject likely conflated the EU with a specific struggling member state or sector.
"Germany has deindustrialized. They have no car industry left because of energy prices."	German Industry	Destatis (Federal Statistical Office): Industrial Output -2.4% YoY; Auto Exports +1.1% [2]	N/A	Misleading	German manufacturing is contracting due to structural energy costs, but the auto industry remains Germany's largest exporter. It has not ceased to exist.
"China is faking their numbers. They say 5%, but they are actually shrinking. It's negative."	China GDP	IMF / World Economics (Shadow Est): Official: 4.2%; Adjusted Est: 2.9% [3]	N/A	Factually Incorrect	While independent models (using night lights and rail cargo) show China exaggerating growth, no credible model shows negative growth (contraction) for 2025.
"China paid us $300 billion in tariffs this year alone."	Trade/Fiscal	U.S. Treasury (MTS Dec 2025): Total Customs Duties collected: $98 Billion [4]	+206%	Factually Incorrect	Total duties from all countries are ~$98B. Furthermore, tariffs are paid by US importers (liability), not the exporting nation (China).
"We have achieved 6% growth last quarter."	US GDP	BEA (Advance Est. Q4 2025): 2.9% (Real GDP, SAAR) [5]	+106%	Factually Incorrect	Likely conflated Nominal GDP (which includes inflation) with Real GDP.
"German energy prices are up 500%."	Energy Prices	Bundesbank / Eurostat: Producer Prices (Energy) -12% YoY (vs 2024) [6]	N/A	Factually Incorrect	German energy prices spiked in 2022/23 but have normalized significantly by 2026 due to LNG infrastructure and renewables, though they remain higher than US prices.
"We are producing more oil than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined."	Energy Output	IEA (2025 Report): US: 21M bpd; Saudi+Russia: ~23M bpd [7]	-9%	Directionally Correct	Statistically exaggerated, but the US remains the dominant single producer globally.
"Unemployment is at 3.2%."	US Labor	BLS (Dec 2025): 3.5% [8]	-8.5%	Accurate	Within standard statistical noise/margin of error.

There are a total of 127 claims, the vast majority being unverifiable, factually incorrect or misleading. Without the shield of education, a listener might accept these superlatives, misleading and factually incorrect claims at face value. However, the educated learner approaches such claims with a different set of questions. They do not ask, "Does this sound good?" They ask, "What is the source, what is the delta (variance from the true value), and what is the context?"

Consider the claim that "inflation has been defeated." A student of economics knows that inflation is not a binary switch. They understand the distinction between disinflation and the reality of price levels. While the President claimed a "dramatic turnaround," an educated inquiry reveals that while some metrics like inflation align with real-time data, other core metrics like inflation remain "stubbornly high" in specific sectors when compared to historical datasets.

The Three Pillars of the Educational Shield

How does a "proper education" actually protect a student? It stands on three specific pedagogical pillars:

1. Statistical Literacy (The Quantitative Guardrail)

Numbers are often used as weapons in political discourse because they carry an aura of objective truth. A proper education teaches students how to spot "cherry-picking." In the Davos speech, the President cited a record % growth in manufacturing investment.  An educated mind recognizes this must be checked against the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to see if it accounts for a sustained surge in investment or simply reflects a post-tariff surge.

2. Logical Inquiry (The Qualitative Guardrail)

Post-fact worlds rely heavily on simplified narratives. In Davos, the return to "Energy Dominance" was framed as a singular victory. However, education allows a learner to cross-reference this with International Energy Agency (IEA) data to understand that global market shifts often play as large a role as domestic policy. Logical inquiry allows the learner to separate the policy from the personality.

3. Information Hygiene (The Source Guardrail)

In an age of AI-generated content, knowing where to look is as important as knowing what to look for. Proper education instills a habit of primary source verification. Instead of relying on a social media summary, the educated learner seeks the transcript and cross-references it with "gold standard" datasets like the IMF’s World Economic Outlook or the Federal Reserve’s FRED database. Nowadays with advanced reasoning large language models, like Gemini 3.0 Pro doing deep research it is relatively uncomplicated to check the facts using a vairety of sources, before the US political fact checking engines have pulished their findings. Although this model suffer few hallucinations, it is neverthelss recommendable to run a sources and citations audit seperately on its findings.

Beyond the Classroom: Education as Civic Duty

The protection offered by education is not just an individual benefit; it is a collective necessity. When learners are unable to distinguish between an "accurate" claim, a "directionally correct" claim, and an "entirely untrue" one, the foundation of public debate crumbles.

If a leader claims that a "Golden Dome" missile defense system is already protecting the continent, or that the acquisition of Greenland is a "done deal" for billions of dollars, the citizenry lacks the shield if they cannot check military appropriations or international treaty law. Education fills that vacuum with the cold, hard oxygen of reality.

Conclusion: Investing in the Shield

As we look toward the future, the "post-fact" world shows no signs of retreating. But the counter-measure remains as old as the Socratic method: a rigorous, skeptical, and well-funded education. When we invest in proper education, we aren't just teaching skills; we are building a civilian "Forensic Audit" department. Let us ensure every student is well-armed and well-protected. 

References

[1] Eurostat. (2026, January 30). Preliminary flash estimate for the fourth quarter of 2025. European Commission.

[2] Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis). (2026, January 15). Production in industry: December 2025. Federal Statistical Office of Germany.

[3] International Monetary Fund. (2026, January). World Economic Outlook Update: Divergent Recoveries. IMF; World Economics. (2026). China Data Reliability Ratings.

[4] U.S. Department of the Treasury. (2026, January). Monthly Treasury Statement: Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government, December 2025. Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

[5] U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2026, January 28). Gross Domestic Product, Fourth Quarter 2025 (Advance Estimate). U.S. Department of Commerce.

[6] Deutsche Bundesbank. (2026, January). Monthly Report: Energy Prices and Industrial Competitiveness.

[7] International Energy Agency. (2025). Oil 2025: Analysis and forecast to 2030. IEA Publications.

[8] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2026, January 9). The Employment Situation – December 2025. U.S. Department of Labor.

References (APA Format)

Global News. (2026, January 21). Read the full transcript of Donald Trump's speech at Davos. https://www.google.com/search?q=https://globalnews.ca/news/11623027/read-full-transcript-donald-trump-speech-davos

Di Tella, R., Galiani, S., & Schargrodsky, E. (2012). Reality versus propaganda in the formation of beliefs about privatization. Journal of Public Economics, 96(5-6), 553–567. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2011.11.006

Annex 1: We used Gemini 3.0 Pro and an optimized prompt based on this one:

"You are an experienced analyst of macro-economic data well versed in interpreting economic indicators and the System of National Accounts. You hold a doctorate in economic history from The renowned European University Institute in Florence and have published in high-impact economic journals and a book on economic history with Cambridge University Press. First I want you to look up an accurate transcript of Donald Trump's speech at Davos on the 21st of January 2026. Next I want you to create a table of all macro-economic facts and statistics Mr. Trump mentioned, and check them against leading published data from the US Statistical Office, BER, U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Federal Reserve, IMF Eurostat, the IEA and other recognized national and international data sources. Finally, I want you to compare Trump's facts with the facts from those sources, and decide whether it is entirely untrue, somewhat true with a range of plus or minus 25%, or accurate. Report in a formatted table. Do a deep research, and use numbered reference in text, and a list of sources at the end in APA format. "