Missing Counter-Evidence Renders NLP Fact-Checking Unrealistic for Misinformation. (arXiv:2210.13865v1 [cs.CL])

Misinformation emerges in times of uncertainty when credible information is
limited. This is challenging for NLP-based fact-checking as it relies on
counter-evidence, which may not yet be available. Despite increasing interest
in automatic fact-checking, it is still unclear if automated approaches can
realistically refute harmful real-world misinformation. Here, we contrast and
compare NLP fact-checking with how professional fact-checkers combat
misinformation in the absence of counter-evidence. In our analysis, we show
that, by design, existing NLP task definitions for fact-checking cannot …

arxiv evidence fact-checking misinformation nlp