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Can a dog really trust you?

Dogs can smell fear, but can they sniff out the truth? Your dog might actually be smarter than you're giving it credit for. It turns out, dogs are pretty good at picking up on human behavior. Science says so. A team led by Akiko Takaoka of Kyoto University in Japan conducted a study which found out that dogs actually know if you're to be believed or not.

The study involved tricking dogs in the name of science. Humans have known for a long time that if you point at an object, a dog will run to it. Researchers utilized this information in their study. During the experiment, they pointed at a container that was filled with hidden food. Sure enough, the dog ran towards the container. Then, they pointed at a container that was empty. The dogs ran towards it, but found that it had no food.


The third time the researchers pointed at a container with food, the dogs refused to go to the container. They knew the person pointing wasn't reliable based off their previous experience. 34 dogs were used in the experiment, and every single dog wouldn't go towards the container the third time. This experiment either proves that dogs can spot a liar or that dogs have major trust issues.

animals, trust, science

Puppy in a bowl.

assets.rebelmouse.io

In other words, if you lie to your dog, your dog forms the opinion that your word isn't good and will behave accordingly. "Dogs have more sophisticated social intelligence than we thought. This social intelligence evolved selectively in their long life history with humans," said Takaoka, who was also surprised that dogs were quick when they "devalued the reliability of a human.”

John Bradshaw of the University of Bristol in the UK, who wasn't involved in this study, says that the results indicate that dogs prefer predictability. When gestures are inconsistent, dogs tend to become nervous and stressed.

The researchers have plans to repeat the experiment swapping out the dogs with wolves because wolves are closely related to dogs. The point of this isn't to get bitten by wolves, but rather, to see the "profound effects of domestication" on dogs.

This article originally appeared on 06.06.19.

"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period," said press secretary Sean Spicer during his first time in the White House briefing room. That claim: totally false.

According to the D.C. Metro, "subway entries Friday, during President Trump’s inauguration, totaled about 570,557 in a 20-hour period," which is lower than the totals of the previous three presidential inaugurations.The Women's March, held the day after the inauguration, saw more than 1 million entries.

"You're saying it's a falsehood and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that," said counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway in a heated interview with "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd.


Predictably, "alternative facts" have been all over the internet this week.

Even Merriam-Webster issued a brilliantly worded rebuttal to Conway's creation of "alternative facts."

"Alternative facts" aren't a new political tool. They've been used throughout history by people in power to maintain control and status. But each time we've been able to debunk these myths in the name of progress.

Here are seven times throughout history alternative facts were used — and later proven false:

1. Alternative fact: The world is flat.

Oftentimes alternative facts are accepted as truth until real facts and information can be sought out and proven, much like with the first global explorers who took to the seas in search of new lands.

What you see below was considered common knowledge during the Middle Ages. The Earth was "flat."

The Greeks discovered the Earth was round. Everyone outside of Europe believed it. It wasn't until the late Middle Ages that everyone inside of Europe finally caught up.

Washington Irving wrote “The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus” in 1828. From the title, you'd think it's a biography but in reality, it was mostly fiction and said that "Europeans learned from Columbus’s trips to the New World that the planet was round."

Because of this storyline and others like it, children were taught that up until Columbus, everyone thought the world was flat.

Photo by George Pickow/Three Lions/Getty Images.

Actual fact: The world is round.

Ancient Greek astronomer Eratosthenes is credited with discovering the spherical nature of the Earth in 240 B.C., 700 years before the Middle Ages and 2,000 years before Washington Irving picked up his first pen.

2. Alternative fact: Jesus was white.

The world's most famous refugee is often historically depicted as a blue-eyed, pale-skinned messiah:

"Sacred Heart of Jesus" via N. Currier/Library of Congress.

Actual fact: Jesus would not have been white.

Assuming Jesus existed, the BBC documentary "Son of God" used modern technology to show us what he would have actually looked like, based on ancient skulls of Semite people from the same era and geographical location.

Image from "Son of God," BBC.

3. Alternative fact: Slavery is a good thing.

In the 1820-30s, politicians in southern states defended slavery by professing the "positive good" of it and how important it was for the American economy. They claimed it allowed Africans to be civilized because white masters were letting them learn from them. (I did not make this up.)

Actual fact: Slavery is awful, inhumane, and wrong.

It took a bit longer in the U.S., but the British began the process of outlawing slavery and the slave trade in 1807. The moral ineptitude of treating humans like property and even valuing them as 3/5 of a person is a dark side of American history. It all finally came to a head with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863. This eventually helped end the Civil War but claimed up to 750,000 lives, including Lincoln's.

Image by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

4. Alternative fact: Jews are the reason for Germany's problems.

Jospeh Goebbels was Hitler's minister of propaganda. Goebbels was a master of illusion and he used the murder of a German diplomat by a young Polish-Jew to launch the massive campaign to end Judaism. He did this by convincing the masses that the Jews were responsible for all of Germany's problems.

Image by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Actual fact: Germany needed an excuse to go to war in order to fix their economy that hadn't recovered from the last war.

The incarceration and murder of over 6 million Jews was the result of the German people looking the other way and believing in the above mentioned alternative facts. They had lost a lot of land in the previous global battle and were more than happy to launch into the worst war the world has ever seen. But we learned that lesson and hopefully will never let something like that happen again.

Image by Horace Abrahams/Keystone/Getty Images.

5. Alternative fact: AIDS is a gay problem.

White House press secretaries shouldn't make fun of minority groups ... but in the '80s, Larry Speakes was caught on tape espousing crude homophobic jokes when asked about the AIDS crisis. This sentiment carried over to mainstream thinking, with people assuming only gay people got AIDS.

Actual fact: AIDS can be transmitted in many ways.

About half the people who have died from AIDS in the U.S. since the epidemic began were gay men. Is that a large percentage? Sure. But the alternative fact created the perception that HIV/AIDS was not only a disease solely among gay men, but also one that it was only sexually transmitted.

6. Alternative fact: Iraq had WMDs.

We have been at war for 15 years because of this alternative fact.

Photo by Stephen Jaffe/AFP/Getty Images.

Actual fact: Nope. They didn't.

"The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction reports that the intelligence community was 'dead wrong' in its assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities before the U.S. invasion," according to CNN.

7. Alternative fact:  Trump's inauguration had the largest, hugest, most "bigly" crowds ever.

Actual Fact: Photographic evidence.

Left photo by Lucas Jackson/Getty Images, right photo by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images.

Each of these examples was a heavily pushed alternative fact created by the ruling religion, class, race, military, or administration. But each was debunked.

Sometimes with technology. Sometimes with pure math. Sometimes with common sense, and sometimes with compassion. We are better off as a (round) planet because of it.

It's important to be critical of the media you consume and not listen to the loudest frequency on your social media feed (even if it is behind the seal of the president). With many unbiased, impartial news sources available at our fingertips through a free press, it's important to take advantage of them.

So next time the White House press secretary tells you something hilariously untrue, just know that in less than four years you can cast an alternative vote.

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Participant Media Denial

“[In] ‘95 I got a letter ... that David Irving was thinking of suing me for libel, for calling him a Holocaust denier. And my first reaction was to laugh."

Those are the words of Deborah Lipstadt, a professor and expert on Jewish history, whose story is the real-life inspiration for the new film, "Denial." In 1993, Lipstadt wrote a book called "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." In it, she called a man named David Irving a Holocaust denier.

Timothy Spall as David Irving in "Denial." All images via Participant Media and Bleecker Street.  


You see, David Irving had previously denied the existence of gas chambers and asserted that the active targeting and extermination of millions upon millions of Jewish people was gravely exaggerated. He went so far as to state that Hitler himself had attempted to protect the Jewish people in the midst of these events. Irving grossly distorted history to suit the narrative of his choosing, and Lipstadt mentioned that in her work.

Lipstadt thought Irving's suit was too absurd to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, she soon realized he was very serious.

Lipstadt found herself in a defining moment of her life — should she brush off the suit and settle? Or should she take a stand, knowing that would involve lawyers, a lengthy trial in a country that's not her home, and the monumental task of, in essence, proving the existence of the Holocaust?

Lipstadt knew that, for her, there was only one option. Watch this moving clip.

In spite of the challenges that she knew lay ahead, Lipstadt decided to fight.

The case would be held in the U.K., which puts the burden of proof on the defendant in cases of libel (though there were some changes to the law in 2013). This meant that it would be up to Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, to prove that Irving’s claims about the Holocaust were false and that he was in fact a denier.

As the trial progressed, Lipstadt and her team began to feel fairly confident they would win, but one moment threw them for a loop. Lipstadt recalls, "The judge asked, 'Can one be a genuine Holocaust denier?' In other words, if you really believe it didn’t happen, is that wrong?"

Rachel Weisz as Deborah Lipstadt in "Denial."

She explains, "We were flabbergasted by that because it’s sort of, can you be a genuine racist? If you really believe people of color are lesser beings is there something wrong with that? And of course there’s something wrong with that. Because it's based on a lie."  

It was that desire to help truth prevail — and to demonstrate there are consequences for lying — that propelled Lipstadt forward.

Lipstadt didn’t want to be at the center of such a huge public battle. But when the fight arrived at her doorstep, she couldn't turn away.

"You can’t fight every battle. Because otherwise you go through life fighting. But there's certain battles you can’t turn away from.There's certain challenges you can't ignore," she said.

She knew that if she lost the case, the consequences would stretch far beyond the verdict.

"Anybody else who would have wanted to write after about these guys would have been shut down, and publishers would have been too scared to publish them," she said.

And what message would it have sent to the loved ones of Holocaust survivors?

As Lipstadt put it, she needed to fight on "behalf of people who can’t. Either because they never survived or even if they survived they don’t have the opportunity to stand up and do this."

She continued, "The most touching thing to me — and even now I can hardly all these years later talk about it without getting emotional — was the response of survivors and children of survivors."

“We thought over the course of the trial that we would win, but we never thought that we would get such a damning verdict."

The judge didn't just rule against Irving — Lipstadt recalls that in his verdict, the judge called Irving a racist and an anti-Semite, branding Irving a pro-Nazi active Holocaust denier.  

AsLipstadt put it, "The judge was really appalled by the way David Irving manipulated history. … It was all we could have hoped for and more."

Irving was ordered to pay Lipstadt's legal fees. A few years later, he was arrested in Austria and sentenced to three years in prison for Holocaust denial.

It’s not a cliché: One person really can make a difference.

Even when it's hard, even when the odds seem stacked against you, there's an intrinsic benefit in speaking up for what you know to be right. For exposing hate for what it is.

One person can make a world of difference.

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My husband was leading a double life. How I fell apart, then found strength.

One woman's story of finding strength during divorce and deceit.

A few weeks after giving birth to my first baby, I was wracked with pain to the point that I could barely move.

Swinging my legs, one after another, out of bed took nearly all my willpower. This pain had nothing to do with the physical stress of childbirth or the stitches still holding my swollen private area together.

This pain came from a place so deep within me that I could not determine where the pain ended and I began. We were intertwined. It was all-consuming.


It felt as if half of my DNA had been ripped out of my body and I was left with a dangling half-strand.

Until that moment, I hadn't realized that my husband had become a part of me. Now, in his absence, I felt an emptiness where he had been. I knew I would never be whole again.

In “Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind,” psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman and writer Carolyn Gregoire explore what happens in the aftermath of a traumatic event:

“The more we are shaken, the more we must let go of our former selves and assumptions, and begin again from the ground up. ... Rebuilding can be an incredibly challenging process. ... It can be grueling, excruciating, and exhausting. But it can open the door to a new life.”

I know that door.

I found out my husband was leading a double life almost immediately after I gave birth to my daughter.

There was another girlfriend, and a secret credit card. Then other women started to come forward.

I was suddenly on my own with a newborn baby. I grieved him, and the future I thought we would have together, like a death.

Photo from me, used with permission.

While these have been without a doubt the most difficult months of my life, there was also something incredibly freeing in being ripped to shreds and then rebuilding myself piece by piece.

I told my therapist that everything seemed somehow clearer. “I feel like the human interactions I do have are very genuine now. I used to make kind of superficial small talk a lot, and I don’t do that anymore. I can’t really explain it. I just feel like I see people now.”

She told me that these moments of clarity are made possible precisely because you no longer have room for a lot of the crap you used to spend so much time thinking about. You are stripped clean.

You’ve always possessed this power. Maybe you just never knew how to access it.

Before experiencing trauma, I cared very much what people thought of me, from close family and friends to strangers. I had trouble making decisions because I wanted to please everyone. Even navigating a grocery store could be stressful — all those strangers silently observing and judging me.

Then, for months, I was trapped in my own body, forced to sit in the pain. Let me be clear. When I say “sit in the pain” I mean not running into someone else’s arms, not getting sloshed every night, and not hiding behind work.

Being trapped in my body meant that I couldn’t run from the darkness or try to do whatever it took to feel “good” again.

We humans naturally try to avoid feelings of discomfort — especially today, when instant gratification is just a click away on social media or a swipe away on an online dating app, when endorphins can be produced and manipulated simply by picking up an iPhone. People are even less likely to be still. To just feel.

But as I sat in my pain, I slowly started to trust my own intuition. I became grounded in a very clear sense of self.

When you begin to truly trust and like yourself, you tap into an immense amount of power.

Photo by me, used with permission.

You’ve always possessed this power. Maybe you just never knew how to access it. You find a power within yourself that’s like an anchor, freeing you from a lot of life’s insecurities that seemed so important before.

Dr. Sharon Dekel says, “Post-traumatic growth can be defined as a workable coping mechanism, a way of making and finding meaning involved in the building of a more positive self-image and the perception of personal strength."

The other side of pain is not comfort, or health, or well-being. It is truth.

When this truth comes pouring in, you begin to see all the grimy layers of protection lift away, and you discover that your journey has just begun. You begin to let the light in and, what’s more, you begin to seek out the light.

One morning I woke up and had a sudden realization. The thought entered my mind like a lightning bolt:

“You were always whole to begin with.”

So as much as I sometimes want to scream and rage at my ex-husband, I also want to thank him. I want to thank him for forcing me to become the person I was always meant to be, for showing me that I am a fighter and that I will never give up.

But most importantly, I thank him for allowing me to become this person before my daughter ever knew anyone else.

You can read more about Jen's journey in her memoir "A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal."