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I have found that many people “doing their own research” are only searching for confirmation to their beliefs, and also seem to have a misunderstanding about what “research” actually entails.
If you’re a rational thinker and you believe you have a source that makes a good point, you’ll simply link that source directly, and maybe even explain how it supports the thing you believe. However, if you’re a conspiracy theorist who only has bad sources that can be easily disproven, you’ll become wary about linking to those sources directly or trying to explain what they mean to you, lest someone in the discussion completely blow your argument apart and laugh at you.
That’s why the imperative appeal to “do your own research” has developed - whether intentional or not, it’s a tailor-made strategy to protect bad sources (and bad thinking) from criticism. By telling people to do their own research rather than being up front about your sources and arguments, you try to push people into learning about the topic you want them to internalize while there are no dissenting voices present. It’s a tactic that separates discussion zones from “research” zones, so that “research” can’t be interrupted by reality.
People who actually have good points with good sources don’t need to do this. It’s only the people who are clinging onto bad, debunkable sources (or simple feelings) that need to vaguely tell people to “do their own research”. The actual scientific method is “help me disprove this theory. Only when we all fail can we consider this theory good enough for now, but we will continue looking for other theories that explain things better, and then try and disprove those too”.
No researcher tells another researcher on a level playing field to do their own research. They say, “What have you found? Let’s discuss it.” This is the way progress is made. There’s a reason we’re calling all this the culture wars and not the new renaissance.
Hell, even culture war is generous branding. It’s people living in reality against a loose coalition of people who just generally don’t like them because they’ve been trained to by the moneyed interests who have spent the last 30 years building a propaganda machine to weaponize them for political and financial gain.
The truly strange part is that the research you do as a civilian does not matter. If you somehow got a degree and ran an absolutely bulletproof years-long study in CURRENT THING, the people telling you to “do your own research” would be exactly the people who would not believe you because it would go against their preconceptions. They don’t care about research, they care about belief.
Looking things up online that conform to your viewpoint is not research, it is a means to entrench yourself.
Let’s Do An Experiment!
Right. So by your downvotes, I see that you don’t understand why the scientific method necessitates disregarding personal experience. Let’s show you an extremely simplified but basic example:
Let’s say that a person believes that cats simply do not exist.
Oh, they’ve seen cats before, but they think they’re just really small people covered in carpet and refuse to believe any evidence to the contrary.
Everyone else knows that cats exist; we know there is something wrong with this person.
Regardless, the person decides to do an “experiment” to prove it. They walk into their living room, glue carpet to their spouse, and then claim victory. They then document it stating that in their personal experience, they proved the one cat they found in the area was just a person with carpet glued to them. They gather support online, and publish it in a for-pay journal. The article is never peer-reviewed because the person refused to tell of their methodology, but people repost the “study”.
If science operated in a fashion that the “do your own research” people felt, then we should all believe this person.
Just because a single person has never seen a cat, or chooses not to acknowledge cats, doesn’t mean that factually cats do not exist. Even organizing a poor experiment and claiming they have done “research” does not make them correct. The burden of proof is still present, and a poor experiment is often blown apart in the scientific community or unrepeatable. This is why peer-review without an agenda is incredibly important.
If everything someone “saw with their own eyes” were true, then ghosts, aliens, demons, every God that has ever been worshipped (even though they preclude each other), mythical creatures, and countless other things are all true. All of them. That, or there is a flaw in the logic you are using.
Also, to most of the people here who will no doubt not read this as it may challenge your world view - plugging your ears and screaming as loud as you can to drown out the world does not make truth vanish.
Being insulting, blocking, or downvoting doesn’t mean that you’re correct.
I like to believe that people can be reached and the only outcome isn’t just shit-throwing matches and all-out war. However, if you’re not willing to debate in good faith, then there is no debate.
You have lost at the outset by not being willing to be incorrect.
The scary thing to me about “do your own research” is that it’s independent of “left” and “right”. Measles is a thing again because of the left’s “do your own research” shibboleth largely, while the preventable deaths of over a million Americans (and counting) to COVID-19 is pretty much a “do your own research” eyeball spork of the right.
There’s something very deeply sick in western culture and it’s not getting better with time.
Is that what’s going on here? I was wondering because this post had originally accrued a whole bunch of downvotes initially and I figured this was one of the “safe” opinions to have around left-leaning people and I became very confused.
The downvotes now make more sense, but the opinion makes no sense at all.
That is, indeed, what’s going on here. For all its smug “we follow the science” posturing, the left is just as prone to anti-scientific belief structures as is the right.
It’s quite repulsive, really.
Interesting if you look at the beginning of the pandemic the Democrats and Republican positions were reversed, (ex: on masks) but COVID hit democratic states hardest first (being by the ocean) and that changed pretty quickly.
Had Trump still been president when the vaccine rolled out (he was highly in favour of a “light speed” recovery) I highly suspect that we would have seen a lot of left-wing people suddenly being far more skeptical (if not conspiratorial) - not because of anything to do with the science, but because of the person telling them to get vaccinated.
And because Americans just like to be partisan and contrary (I apologize to reasonable Americans in the audience).
If you’re actually looking for feedback: I admire your intent behind this community, but I think your approach could be improved which would lead to more participation in this community.
To facilitate discussion, more succinct and organized posts would greatly help. And remove that patronizing statement that you begin each of your posts with:
I am definitely looking for feedback!
The initial disclaimer isn’t meant to be patronizing (and does not read as such to me), it is a reminder that we operate differently than the rest of Lemmy does for anyone that may wander in here from browsing All. Yes, we have the rules in the sidebar, but nobody reads the sidebar on mobile.
Our goal is not to bury unpopular opinions, but to discuss those opinions with the holder.
And you’re right that I have seen the open-ended topics to do better than the opinion pieces, but I always felt that the opinion pieces were a good start for people to work from. I welcome my mind being changed and new evidence being shown to me on any of those topics. The problem is is that we get an influx of angry downvotes anyway (often within seconds of posting, which means that it is not being read) and no comments.
Another problem we see are people coming in, commenting once to attack something stated, and then don’t show up when replied to with evidence.
Do you have a suggestion for an initial disclaimer that you wouldn’t see his condescending but still gets the message across?
I half understand how you feel but with how a lot of people are with anything even remotely controversial the downvote button really has become “This is an opinion I don’t like intuitively.”
Ex: On that other platform I can say something perfectly reasonable one place, get a ton of upvotes, in another, a ton of downvotes, and that can make for really samethink “only say safe things,” kinds of communities which frankly is extremely boring. I can get why it’s a thing.
Maybe the wording could be tweaked a little if it’s coming off as talking down to…but there are a lot people who could at least use a reminder to think about things a little more charitably even when they disagree with them.