Scientists show how ‘doing your own research’ leads to believing conspiracies — This effect arises because of the quality of information churned out by Google’s search engine::Researchers found that people searching misinformation online risk falling into “data voids” that increase belief in conspiracies.
I see a lot of hate against the concept of doing one’s own research on the internet and it really bothers me. The problem is not doing one’s own research. The scientists that wrote this paper also did their own research. All scientists (should) do their own research. That’s inherent to science and that’s part of what got humanity this far. The problem is that some people lack the capabilities to properly assess information sources and draw correct conclusions from them. So these people end up with incorrect beliefs. Of course they could just “trust the experts” instead, but how are they supposed to know which experts to trust if they’re not good at assessing sources of information? Finding those experts is in itself a task that requires you to do your own research.
TL;DR: I think this hate on “doing your own research” is unjustified. People believing nonsense is a problem that is inescapable and inherent to humanity.
Doing your own research being good/bad depends entirely on one’s ability to scrutinize reliable sources. When I “do my own research” it looks like this.
When my brother “does his own research” he presents horrendously false information from terribly bias and debunked sources. He’s the primary family member which influenced my writing that piece on radicalism.
If someone is unable to comprehend/recognize valid from invalid/biased sources/information, “doing their own research” is very dangerous in fueling further extreme/conspiratorial beliefs.
QAnon and covid/anti-masking are great examples in which people “doing their own research” resulted in a lot of unnecessary suffering and stupidity.
People should learn how to effectively scrutinize sources before they attempt to “research” something themselves. “Doing your own research” can be productive or unproductive, and it depends entirely on the individual.
So as I see it, there are two actual problems that cause the general perception of doing your own research being bad (which is an astonishingly anti intellectual position / cultural meme).
Popular search engines are hot garbage as they are highly incentivized in numerous ways to promote spectacular nonsense of all kinds which at this point are basically just ‘genres of content’.
An astounding number of people seemingly have no ability to do critical thinking, nor do they know what proper research entails. Basically, this is because education in general is on the decline: Public education no longer has (and in many areas never did) the funding or mindset to teach people /how to think/, and with ever more expensive secondary education from ever lower quality colleges, less people understand /how to do proper research/.
Finally, I will point out the insufferable fury I have toward boomers, the generation that told me as a child that wikipedia could not be used as a source, not even wikipedia’s sources as a valid source because the internet is full of nonsense… and then the vast majority of them aged and wisened to believe anything some delusional crackpot posts on a racist facebook meme group, or wacky new age cult / mlm / support group.
My feeling on the issue is that for a lot of people this sort of thinking is just not needed, at least not on the level to do actual academic research. I don’t think its inherent to who they are but just a reflection of the skills they have needed to develop throughout their lives. There is no pressure to develop a rigorous scrutiny of information if there is no consequences to getting the wrong answer. They can survive and thrive well without it. None of their peers are checking them. They might even do better without those skills, more resources to use developing the skills that matter to their lives.
A person who pursues stem as a career has something to lose if they get the wrong answer. Or other areas like journalism ect, I don’t want to imply its only stem people.
just my 2c
I agree. The vast majority of our society at this point believe in thousands of objectively factually false things, in all realms of thinking.
There is a lot of psychological and sociological research on why this happens, and basically it boils down to most people have built a significant amount of their own idea of themselves, their personality around things which if shown to be incorrect would cause them massive cognitive dissonance, so they often ignore it or explain it as fine with basically rhetorical bullshit.
The other main element is that many, many curious people who want to learn are either misled by fraudsters and con artists when they are ignorant and do not have the background knowledge to critically asses what they are being told, and the most common and agreed upon thing: Research and Education take time and money that people do not have.
There is a reason why, historically, after calamities lead to social collapse, you often get either an explosion of cults and superstition, or just a general lack of written records, indicating that practically everyone was too busy working or migrating to do anything intellectual.
In college I took a journalism 101 course as an elective, and we spent at least a couple classes on checking if sources were valid.
For one of the assignments the teacher gave us a list of websites and we had to determine which were legit, and why we thought so.
This kind of thing could easily be taught more broadly and earlier.
Though I imagine the right wing would be upset because they rely on a lot of falsehoods.
I cannot find the study at the moment, but a few years ago a media literacy test was done to a statistically useful amount of Americans as a scientific study.
If you count ‘being able to read multiple news articles from multiple different sources, be able to recognize the history and motivations of the outlet and author, be able to notice differences in vocabulary and phrasing and also be able to notice what is left out of some articles, and what is left out of all articles’ as totally literate…
Then only either 8 or 3 percent of the adult American population is totally literate.
(There were two threshold levels at the top and i cannot remember if the 8 or the 3 percent applied to the description i just gave.)
Further, something approximately /half/ of all adult Americans perform at what is functionally a 7th or 8th grade level of literacy, or worse.
Left wing mainstream media may be pro science, but they rarely report good scientific articles. They report science headlines because their target demographic trusts scientists. So it can be more influential in setting an agenda
Mainstream media… left wing… all corporate media is neo liberal and firmly on the right.
The whole media and us population is right wing, except Bernie which tones it down so he has a fiddle of hope to get elected. So US POLITICS range from right to far far right
Change my mind
The majority of mainstream media, save for Fox News (and perhaps one or two others) is left wing my American standards.
Okay, but how do I recognise valid from invalid, bias from unbiased?
Take that sketchy blog you linked me to, it’s just some thing some guy wrote. Can that be trusted? Must I spend significant free time to do in-depth research on all of his references to ascertain if he’s valid and unbiased? How will I know if the sources are valid and unbiased? Will I have to do in-depth research on all of their references too? When does it end?
At some point you just have to trust someone, you can’t unravel the complete truths of anything to their very core. Most of us don’t even have the free time to unravel things more than a little bit.
I see the point you’re making and don’t entirely disagree, critical thinking is something that’s taught and learned, and it’s what makes the difference here. But this idea that we can ever actually know that what we’re reading is reliable or unbiased? I don’t buy it.
I think it’s impossible to actually know if a source is reliable without directly confirming its assertions with your own eyeballs.
And, I think it’s impossible to actually know if a source is endeavouring to actually be unbiased, or if they have an agenda or plan, without literally reading the minds of those involved to ascertain their motives and potential schemes.
At the end of the day, people who place their bets on one side of the fence or the other when it comes to who to trust aren’t so different. Critical thinking and the ability to ask questions constantly and never take anything you hear as truth just on the face of things is what’s most important, I think. That way, you’re at least a little more prepared to spot lies when they crop up.
I guess that’s my point, haha.
Unfortunately after coming to this realisation I don’t know who to trust any more :-( Obviously I can’t trust the media, they’re owned by the rich ruling class and even when they report truths, they do so via a thick veil of bias that makes it difficult to know if I’m getting all the facts, or if I’m missing out on huge important chunks of information entirely.
Take all the reporting on our recent UK strikes, all the reporting was there, but it was all about how disruptive and terrible the strikes were for everyone else, painting a picture of selfish, greedy workers making things worse for everyone else because they only care about themselves. The whole article would barely if at all mention in any depth why they’re striking, why they felt they had no other choice, how this is a symptom of a larger problem with late stage capitalism, etc.
The media is owned by the rich, obviously they’re going to paint the picture they want. And that news source I’m talking about isn’t even privately owned, it’s our tax funded government news organisation.
The government itself is also owned by the rich, our PM is just a few million short of being a literal billionaire, he’s a business capitalist. They can’t be trusted either. They all have their own agendas and reasons to skew facts and trick people.
Take Brexit as a well known example of both private interests AND the government itself tricking millions of people with lies and deception and exploitation to make an absolutely terrible decision that damaged this country irreparably. Everything people saw on TV, websites, social media, newspapers, radio, leaflets, etc, was chock full of disinformation, emotional trickery, etc.
Even the people saying Brexit was a bad idea had their own agendas and clear bias, and while I side with them, can I truly, honestly say that what they said is unbias and definitely reliable with no hidden ulterior motives? Alas, no.
So where do I get my reliable, unbias information even if I have my critical thinking hat on? I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t believe anything, not fully, unless I see it with my own eyes. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that comes to me through other channels is twisted along the way by bias and agendas.
I’m not happy about it, it makes me very sad :-( But yeah, that’s kinda where I’m at these days.
I totally get where you’re coming from in regard to the importance of critical thinking and media bias/government influence.
As for my blog, the references section is how how I affirm it’s valid information. I used scholarly sources or reputable publications, like Psychology today, and only linked to media sources when it was pertaining to the current radicalism in our politics over here in the US.
But even then, I personally use independent media fact checkers on the media institutions I cited. Cross-checking what those articles state is pretty easy, and having multiple unbiased/less biased sources corroborating reporting is a decent indication it is accurate.
But as you said, recognizing the validity of citations is a learned skill. Speaking personally, this was a skill I developed academically. I often encourage people to take a critical thinking course at a local community college and I believe that should be mandatory curriculum in high school/secondary school.
That certainly provided me with a buffer to the misinformation and radicalism that I’ve seen grip and corrupt so many people I know/knew.
Weird that you would showcase a vacuous article as an example of “research”.
Have a bit too high of an opinion of yourself don’t you?
Edit: Your UAP article is hilarious. You have a BS in bs, I mean psychology, and yet you are voicing an opinion on how QM totally corroborates with the data. You don’t even know how radar and infrared sensors work (and their inherent and potential flaws), and completely fail to consider that displacement of air at the velocity claimed would heat it several thousand degrees, not “quantum cooling”. The only way this wouldn’t happen would be if the object somehow didn’t interact with matter while simultaneously emitting electromagnetic radiation, or it was sensor errors.
You’re a complete fraud.
You have no clue what my opinion is of myself. You’re just jumping to conclusions. You talk down to me about being stupid, yet your argument against me is juvenile and half of it is just ad hominem (not valid criticism).
I never claimed to be anything either, so what exactly are you accusing me of being fraudulent about?
What’s wrong with the information I have cited within my articles on radicalism and on violence and mental illness? Do you not like the information? Do you have a complaint about a particular source?
As far as your criticism about my UAP write-up, are you referring to the section on the Nimitz Event in which I mentioned some UAPs’ movements reminded me of the quantum locking and quantum levitation of super-cooled superconducting? The part where I say that is out of my depth?
Yeah, admitting something is beyond my education/comprehension screams fraud, genius…
The vast majority of my UAP write-up is reporting information. I speculate a few times, but I make that clear and do not make wild claims like you’re misframing it to be. I reported information and expert testimony.
Kevin Day is the one who said the radar was confirmed by Fravor’s (as well as others’) visual observations that day. The pilots said that it wasn’t visual instrument malfunctions, because they saw it with their naked eyes.
If you have a problem with their accounts, take it up with them. I truly don’t care what you think of me or your petty criticism and insults.
I’ll readily admit I’m not educated in avionics, which is why I quoted all of those individuals who were in various roles of expertise.
If your critism is that all of my arguments/beliefs are bogus because it’s out of my depth, then surely you concede on the grounds of expert testimony, as in the Nimitz Event?
Or do you think you know more than our greatest pilots and military personnel?
Edit: Just took more notice of this:
I would not consider my articles legitimate research, which was not being discussed in this thread. “Doing your own research” is a common saying, and that’s what was being discussed here.
I don’t know if you’re doing it intentionally or unintentionally, but you certainly misconstrued the colloquialism to try to make fun of/discredit me, which is dishonest and a disingenuous argumentative tactic.
If you think I’m such an idiot, you can surely make a stronger case than this disingenuous argument full of ad hominem. You argue like a poor man’s sophist.
“I would not consider my article legitimate research”
Then why did you link it as an example? Nobody cares about what style of essay you like to write, this was clearly you trying to flex.
I write actual research papers and I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to cite my own work (which actually does meet standards of research) as an example; you must just be really proud of that BS in psychology.
“Know more than our greatest pilots and military personnel”
Because they built the sensors and study atmospheric physics? You realise pilots, are pilots, not aeronautical or electrical engineers? Why on earth is their opinion magically more credible? Especially when the claim is completely contradictory to very well established physics. I fact I even gave a reason why their information is overwhelmingly likely to be faulty, due to atmospheric heating.
Before anyone tries to engage in explaining complex physical phenomenon, they should try to have some knowledge about it. I would personally recommend reading a textbook on radar engineering and another in atmospheric physics which pretty much explains nearly every single illusion and sensory error possible.
Since you clearly don’t have the intelligence to follow my recommendation, a simpler circumstance is investigating the second Gulf of Tonkin attack, where “the greatest pilots and military personnel” reported seeing attacking boats (including on sonar, a clearly infallible sensor) and bombed and torpedoed empty ocean. We know it was empty now, because the NVA records show that no ships were their.
This isn’t to denigrate the people involved, it’s simply an notable example that sensors can fail, data can be misinterpreted and people can perceive objects that aren’t there especially if they have been told something’s there beforehand.
FYI, fooling sensors into providing false data is a core part of military strategy, it’s the motivation behind ECM, low-altitude interdiction, etc.
If you even remotely understood the topic you would realise that even the definition of UAP means absolutely nothing. If you have 10s of thousands of hours of sensor data over decades of course you’re going to have inputs you can’t map to physical objects, the fact that you can’t conclusively identify the source of the input doesn’t mean that it’s a magical object, or even a real one.
There’s a reason why physicists and the military aren’t dedicating extraordinary amounts of time on these, because we all know it’s nothing.
Are you purposefully dodging the obvious difference between actual research and “doing your own research”?
What I was citing is an example of how “doing your own research” (colloquialism) can yield something productive and valid when I was sharing my article. I was using that as a example, and comparing it to my brother who “does his own research” (again, we’re talking about the colloquial meaning…) and believes QAnon insanity and conspiracy theories about everything.
That is what the original post topic is referring to. Not literal scholarly research as you appear to be stuck on.
What I wrote on UAP is not the equivalent of QAnon crazies. I cited declassified documents from the National Archives and quoted various pilots/military/government personnel.
Your retort here just tells me you read snippets of my UAP article and are not acknowledging most of the information. Kevin Day was the Cheif Radar Operator, and this is a direct quote:
The pilots witnessed the object/its movements with their own eyes, which corroborated the data from their sensors and radar data on the Princeton. I’m going to trust the concerns of the Cheif Radar Operator, multiple Top Gun pilots from a world famous squadron, and their weapons systems specialist over you and your arrogant condescension.
I guess I should have specified that what I am referring to is the category D UAP (see the COMETA report). I believe that some percentage of category D UAP could be possibly explainable by more conventional explanation.
I’m also not arguing that there is evidence of extraterrestrials; I’m only arguing that a percentage of category D UAP represent intelligently controlled physical objects, which represent disruptive/breakthrough technology.
That does not mean the technology could not be of human origin. But this technology represented in the Nimitz Event outperformed our F/A-18F Superhornets, and that same type of craft was identified on a mass scale beginning in 1947.
The sightings were so prevalent in the 50s that the US Air Force issued a public address on UFOs to the nation.
The reason I don’t rule out the possibility of non-human technology myself is because this kind of technology being invented and concealed since 1947 somehow seems even less reasonable to me.
You can disagree with me, the expert individuals’ accounts, and refuse to acknowledge the documents from the National Archives, but it doesn’t make my argument crazy.
I am simply arguing there is breakthrough/disruptive technology represented in a percentage of the category D UAP. That is supported by ODNI’s report as well, in which it states a potential national security concern is that they could represent breakthrough/disruptive technology by an adversary.
Of the 510 total UAP reports studied by ODNI, 171 remained “uncharacterized and unattributed,” and “some of these uncharacterized UAP appear to have demonstrated unusual flight characteristics or performance capabilities, and require further analysis."
I am up for debating the subject. If I am wrong about anything and you have expertise and can share it/information, I’m all ears. Unlike most people, I want to challenge my beliefs and will gladly shift my beliefs in the face of compelling evidence.
There’s more supporting evidence of disruptive/breakthrough tech represented in category D UAP than there is evidence of any religion.
And if this is a bogus area not worhy of study, why is Harvard’s Galileo Project so invested in studying UAP? Or UAPx? And why was there such unprecedented unanimous bipartisan support passing UAP related bills in the least productive House in history?
Easy, get a physics degree. I already pointed out how the data was clearly incorrect. If UAP are really as credible as you claim (convincing military pilots and Congress critters) how come it doesn’t convince the actual subject matter experts? Physicists.
If this was even remotely plausible, you wouldn’t be having a handful of people looking into it, it would be a core focus of the field.
Ha, all you did is assert it’s invalid without any supporting information. Explain how it’s wrong and I will consider your argument.
I already discussed Harvard’s Galileo Project lead by experts. Or UAPx, which is a scientific organization studying the subject. NASA is also gearing up to study study UAP, and have argued against stigmatizing the subject as you are guilty of here. Source
Let’s not ignore Project Blue Book, AATIP, and now currently AARO, which are/were US government agencies/projects devoted to studying/monitoring UAP.
There’s also the UK’s historical government UAP investigations, as well as France’s studies by GEIPAN (essentially their NASA). And if you want to criticize their legitimacy, consider how NASA regarded the COMETA Report.
Just because all experts aren’t taking it seriously doesn’t mean none are. So if your criterion for validity is experts investigating the subject, it is met.
This is exactly why I use Semmelweis’s discovery of handwashing as analogous to this situation. He couldn’t explain why there was such a significant reduced mortality rate from handwashing prior to surgery, and he was ridiculed for his findings by the medical community, and he was eventually institutionalized in an asylum where he died.
His findings were rejected on the basis of preexisting beliefs; not lack of validity or ability to study the subject. This is where we currently are with UAP, where there is a growing number of scientists and experts beginning to lend the subject credence, but there is an overwhelming toxic stigma perpetuated by closed-minded individuals which discourages experts from jeopardizing their career/credibility.
This is also seen in both commercial and military pilots, but more and more are coming forward to share their testimonies. Ryan Graves, one of the whistle-blower pilots, founded the Americans for Safe Aerospace organization to provide a confidential means for pilots to report their encounters.
I’m not ignorant of my ignorance in regard to technical understanding of aircraft and physics. That is why my request for you to actually expand on your argument is sincere.
I want to test my beliefs and modify them in the face of new and valid information to maintain congruence. I am a skeptic after all, whether or not you believe it.
As it stands, I am basing my beliefs off of an overwhelming body of government documents and government/military whistle-blowers, as well as expert testimony.
On the other hand, you are a random internet stranger who has been overly hostile and not countering so much as blanket dismissing what I have stated and cited.
If you want me to take you seriously, you’ll have to do a better job explaining how all of the historical international UAP monitoring programs, experts, government/military officials, and pilots around the world are all wrong.
“An overwhelming body of government documents”
Which you don’t understand.
“You’re a random internet stranger”
You’re a random internet stranger as well (actually neither of us are, both of us have public works that is easily findable, and let’s say mine are far more topically relevant). Why on earth are you supposed to treated credibly? Especially when you cite your expertise in QM to explain data, like every single crackpot.
“I am a skeptic after all”
How? If you were a skeptic you would have already been aware of my criticism that the data observed does not match any physical theories, AND that we have no reason to believe that these physical theories are wrong. You are confused by the fact that “diagnostics” merely shows that the software/equipment is working as designed not that it is interpreting the data correctly. (We also don’t know what “diagnostics” were performed, in actual physics we don’t say “we checked for errors” we give explicit descriptions of what errors we conjecture and how we accounted for to them, so saying “diagnostics were performed” is scientifically worthless).
I’ve already given several reasons to doubt the results: unreliability of eye witnesses, faulty interpretation of information, and failure to correspond with existing extremely well established theories. All of these are well-established facts and I gave an example of each one, some of which are so common they are open problems in remote sensing, and regularly exploited. The fact that you are so unfamiliar that you just deny them as being irrelevant, is entirely on you.
“Project Blue Book …”
Sure, there is something of interest in recording UAP, just like any other data. This does not produce any credible theories about them corresponding to the data. In fact essentially every report I’ve read can be summarised as “we can’t determine why we have this data”, that’s it.
“All of the experts”
You mean the people that agree with you and have decided are “all of the” experts?
So can you explain to me why “Q” is NOT the expert on internal politics, but the handful of organisations and witnesses are the experts even though you admit that their views aren’t mainstream in science and can’t refute any argument.
It’s quite hilarious that you complain about this brother, when you are engaging in the same faulty reasoning to defend a conspiracy theory that you want to believe.
On a similar note, you don’t seem to grant parapsychology the same level of credibility even though all the same arguments would lead to conclusions like telepathy actually being real.
And our knowledge is not unlimited, new theories have to be done in a constant evolving way. The sheer arrogance of medical doctors towards rare diseases and the resulting ignorance to acknowledge their existence with treatment refusal is what leads people out not only to alternative, but specifically questionable medicine as well.
The “don’t do your own research” - crowd believes more into misprints than a self-researched identical copy of the original document. They place incredibly high authority into printed information as if it was done by higher beings immune to mistakes. Including misunderstanding the concept many definitions in social sciences like law are inherently socially constructed and therefore unable to be the end to everything.
Sending everyone off to Google is a terrible discussion culture and should be moderated away. Many of my searches end in a self referential loop.
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Most questions were not suitable for scientific publication. Also there are pretty bad studies on the regular.
I hear you. Didn’t really know there was such a pushback.
Just to add to what you’ve said, specifically about how scientists also do their own research … scientists do a lot more than “their own research” (which in this case is reading the literature out there of others’ findings and thoughts).
These include:
Ie, science is very much about the stuff other than “doing your own research/reading” and that stuff, which is all dedicated to getting to the truth of matters, is arguably what makes good science go.
“Do your own research” is a phrase with a lot of baggage. It means more than doing your own research.
It’s a phrase that has been used online in debates over every kind of conspiracy theory, religious idea, or political stance and carries with it the unsaid presumption that alternative sources are the key to learning the “actual truth.” It’s a loaded phrase that acts as a calling card for people who are overly confident that they have the right answer but can’t articulate how they arrived at it.
I roll my eyes whenever I read or hear someone say “do your own research” because I know the debate ends there and there’s no convincing them otherwise.
Thank you for commenting. I am also bothered by this and defended “doing your own research” many times over the last few years. There are many possible pitfalls when you go seeking information but I believe you should not criticize a person for trying.
Effort would (IMO) be better spent on showing them how to figure out whether a secondary source is trustworthy than having them try to dissect scientific papers or other primary research materials with an extremely limited understanding of how to do so.
Most laypeople do not have the skills or desire to become good interpreters of scientific, law, technical, or other jargon-laden documents. Some people do not have the mental capacity required to even read raw Clinton staffer email leaks without coming up with shit like Pizzagate.
It doesn’t help that WikiLeaks added editorial titles to the emails that bore little to no connection to what was actually written. People literally just read the titles, saw that an email was there, and believed it.
I think it was also indexed, so people started doing things similar to what they’re talking about in the article which is basically…they’d use the search engine with some bad search criteria and pretend it proved whatever point it was they were trying to make, even if in context it was completely orthogonal to what they were talking about but just matched via keyword.
I encountered a few of those in the wild at the time…either on Reddit or Twitter (or perhaps both?). They’d send you a query string link and pretend that it was proof someone was a demon or something.
Fund your libraries, and use them. Librarians (the ones with Masters degrees) are trained to teach you that. Contact the State organizations that oversee that certification to make sure it doesn’t go away in the name of lowering salary costs (i.e., your taxes).
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Exactly, the problem isn’t people doing their own research. The problem is also a system (search engines) that doesn’t actually provide quality results.
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