On the Important Difference Between Doing a "Search" and Doing "Research."

No, you're not an expert if you've read some websites. And, you're certainly not "doing your own research."

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between doing a "search" and doing "research" and how that works with conspiracy theory/lies to control our public sphere. Here's an old thread from 2023.

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A thing that's interesting is how "do your own research" on the internet has changed how we understand truth, knowledge, science, and facts. I talk about this with my students a lot, maybe it's a useful thing to think about.

First thing to know is that we are not innately hard-wired for the scientific method. That probably seems obvious once you read it, but it's not. We innately think in narrative, we react to emotion, and we gather facts through observation and investigation. But, we're sloppy.

Humans are notoriously bad observers. We're easily distracted, we misremember, we succumb to groupthink, partisanship, and memory shaping. That's why we have the scientific method and why its invention was so powerful. The goal of science is to make our observations less sloppy.

It's supposed to be a method of collecting information and testing causal relationships that mitigates human error. A community of experts has to verify a scientific fact/truth before it gets established. This is a long process of evaluation.

Field-specific experts are people who have devoted 4 years of undergraduate study, 2-8 years of post-graduate study, perhaps additional post-doc years, and then however many years they have spent doing the research in question. They publish their work in scholarly journals.

The authors do not make money from the publication of their research directly (though they indirectly benefit when they publish because they get to keep their jobs and do more research). A lot of journals charge authors to publish (the publishers make ridiculous $ from academics).

To publish in an academic journal a scholar would have probably submitted a proposal to a funding agency where it would be peer-reviewed (reviewed by experts) and compete against other proposals written by experts. If approved, the research is conducted, data analyzed & reported.

The methods of data collection and analysis are rigorously tested themselves, to make sure that the scholar is measuring and testing what they think they're measuring and testing. Once they write the report, they submit their research for expert peer-review.

During peer-review other experts will be especially critical of method and analysis and in some disciplines the scholar will have to show evidence of replicability--meaning that someone else could do the same research and get the same results.

If the expert peer reviewers have concerns, then they'll ask the scholars to revise and resubmit. This process can take years, literally. But it's worth it because it generates knowledge. And the process is useful because it mitigates our sloppy thinking.

There are, of course, problems with science. Scientists and scholars are human and so they can never be perfectly objective (we are not objects, we are subjects--we are subjective). There will be bias and mistakes, but the process is designed to mitigate those as much as possible.

Outside of the scientific method we fall victim to confirmation bias. We all want to believe what we want to believe about the world. We think we think like scientists, but we don't. We don't carefully and dispassionately observe the world and gather facts.

There is no one to peer review our sloppy thinking. And, this is crucial, we don't know that we don't know. We think that when we "do our own research" that we are scientists. Doing a google search is not doing research. Not merely in the sense that it's not generating knowledge,

But in the sense that google is designed to give you the information you want, which isn't necessarily the correct information. There's lots more about SEO and gaming searches that can be even more problematic, but the point is no internet search is equal to science.

You're not an expert if you've read some stuff on the internet. Experts in one area (for example, the law) are not experts in another area (for example, medicine). I know I've said this before, but Plato's Cave is everything. It's easy to be confused by the shadows on the wall, but the Sun blinds.

Scientific knowledge should be democratized by making it freely available to the public (which has often funded it) and by having scholars (or other writers) translate from the technical sphere (the realm of experts) to the public. The Conversation is great for this.

But we need experts and method and peer review. Without it we just have sloppy thinking, treating partisan shadows as real or blindly following conspiracy clowns who claim they've left the cave and know the truth. 🤡

Anti-intellectualism is a key part of fascism. Recent examples: we don't need to fund education, we should ban books, some kinds of knowledge are useful and others are not (or are dangerous), ban tenure, or "do your own research" and who needs college? All that is anti-democratic.

Like, you probably wouldn't read a few websites about rock climbing and then try to climb a mountain without equipment, right? That's kind of what I'm talking about. But the danger of our limited expertise is more obvious with obviously dangerous things.

I want to add that the gatekeeping around knowledge generation and credentialing in academia is a whole other issue and is as pernicious and authoritarian as in any other realm. That gatekeeping is a form of power that's easily abused, which is why there are now rules protecting rights and access.

As with all things, abuse of power comes as no surprise. That’s why accountability is so important in everything.

A huge part of becoming a subject-matter expert is learning how much there is to know about your topic and how little you actually know about it. That's definitely not the feeling you get when you "do your own research."

Anyone can participate in research (there's a whole "citizen-science" movement), but it has to be rigorous/follow method. If it doesn't, it's not science. And it has to be peer-reviewed by experts to be reputable. But, that's different from a google search. Search isn't research.

I know it sounds "elitist," but it's just a job (and, frankly a low-paying job for nerds with little/few societal rewards). Search isn't research, maybe start with a google scholar search to see the difference: scholar.google.com

If you want to read more: I have a short explainer here on the rhetorical tricks used by conspiracy theorists--including "do your own research."