"Fake News - a case study how the news of Gen2 starters hatching spread"

#PokemonGO: TLTR: An analysis of egg data shows that >20% of data in a recent internet survey was false. This resulted in false information posted which was reposted by others until Fake News circulated and were quoted back to doubters.Fake news is a new buzzword - and the SilphRoad prides itself with likely being the most reliable source on the Internet in regard to news about Pokemon Go. Being involved in the TSR research about hatching eggs gives me a great overview of all the info about eggs and also access to non published data in ongoing research.I therefore followed with interest how the news about Gen2 eggs hatching (or not) unfolded and how inadvertently some fake news were produced in the process.But before I carry on I would like to thank /u/testorom for giving me access to his raw data and this analysis in no way is a criticism of his work. He did a great job in getting out information early - and he tried to safeguard himself against false information but might have underestimated the internet.So let's start with pokemongohub and the questionnaire to figure out which pokemon hatch from gen2 eggs. It started 9 days ago with a questionaire http://ift.tt/2lJCzgu followed by a first list soon later http://ift.tt/2lnXSSl and finally a mobile chart that trended on the frontpage for >24 hours http://ift.tt/2lKco80 there is was copied, reported by others and even reached a submission with >1000 upvotes Egg Chart Picture: http://ift.tt/2l0PhZs analyzed the original data (the first 909 responses) and here are some interesting data points:A total of 21% (191) of responses is wrong94 responses (10%) are for pokemon TSR believes don't hatch. This includes obvious ones (Octillery = evolved form), Delibird and Smeargle (not released yet). Here is some selected data of what was reported:PokemonResponsesChikorita32Cyndaquil10Totodile8Hoothoot7Heracross6Unown6Sentret3 (+10)Octillery2Delibird1Smeargle1Chikorita is by far the most common (false) answer - it was top of the list. So lazy people who wanted to troll just selected the top. And off course such a high number of responses adds to the (false) evidence that Cyndaquil and Totodile should hatch as well. It is no wonder that based on this data all three starters are assumed to hatch. TSR collects data much slower - but even after 1000 hatches not a single gen2 starter has been seen. I added Sentret to the list as I noticed someone at a later stage submitted 10 !! false 10K reports (in brackets) in the span of <5 min. So there are deliberate trolls who like to cause false data. These 10 data points are not included in the 909 data points but worthwhile to mention here.Another 10% of responses are for pokemon which do hatch - but which are reported with the wrong egg distance. I show again only some selected responses with the percentage of false reporting.PokemonResponsesFalse Egg DistancePercentage wrongShuckle6350%Dunsparce4250%Elekid21838%Magby23835%Smoochum26935%Pichu20525%Natu38924%Sudowoodo24521%Togepi53917%Pineco4512%Phanpy5300%Mantine2900%Cleffa2600%Qwilfish900%Yanma900%Now this table makes it much more difficult to reach a conclusion if you want to report news. Shuckle and Dunsparce are the new Grimer/Porygon (in regard to hatch them - I'm told they are easier to catch in the wild) - so not much data gets reported. But this means that they have an extremely high percentage of false data as small numbers have a much higher weight.Of interest then are the baby pokemon which were available before other gen2 was released but which changed egg distance during the Valentines event. There is a high number of false egg distances despite this happening 9 days ahead of the release of other gen2. So between 17% and 38% are either false reporting or old eggs. This shows why it is important to flush all eggs to ensure data integrity.Also interesting that some pokemon are reported without errors. So some pokemon seem to be preferred to be trolled while others might just be not of enough interest.But it wasn't just the data - there were also posters who 'confirmed' their hatches. Interestingly I saw at least one being corrected at a later stage.I hope this analysis helps to shed some light on data integrity. There was a lot of great and accurate data collected and reported. Unfortunately >20% of raw data was wrong and the conclusions made did then circulate and become accepted knowledge.This might also act as a warning if you do your own research. Don’t overestimate the quality of your data input if you haven’t gathered it yourself or if you don’t know the source.Oh and off course we are talking Reddit here. Getting it our first - having some great headlines gets you more upvotes as a boring analysis piece of data that took too long because you double checked it.Edit: Added a remark for Dunsparce/Shuckle as I only compared them to the difficulty to hatch them as 5K eggs - not to obtain them in the wild via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2lUI2l3