Towards informational safety: quality of information and uncertainties of fact machining

Abstract

The paper considers the problem of information credibility. Currently, such a problem is affecting scientists, as well as ordinary people who are dependent on information networks. Hence, the Author formulates three postulates that should be observed in dealing with the quality of information: P1 – identify the source of information, P2 – determine the level of credibility of the information source, P3 – recognize the purpose of information dissemination. The first two postulates are universal because they are applicable to all the users of information. The third becomes more and more important in the social and political choices of citizens. In scientific work, empirical facts are being transformed to empirical data (increasingly, to the form of big data) which are results of advanced registration and processing by means of technical and information science tools, such as: a) technical transforming the empirical signal into information; b) statistical selection of signals, and, next, statistical processing of the received data; c) assessment of results for suitability in applications. Other “epistemic” factors, however, are also involved, as: d) conceptual apparatus used for idealization (and then for interpretation), e) assessment of the results in terms of compliance with the epistemological (sometimes, also commercial or ideological) position. All these factors should be the subject of careful study of errology proposed by P. Homola.