{"id":6048,"date":"2021-09-18T16:01:33","date_gmt":"2021-09-18T16:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6048"},"modified":"2021-09-19T19:51:17","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T19:51:17","slug":"doing-your-own-research-isnt-a-sin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6048","title":{"rendered":"Doing Your Own Research Isn’t a Sin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are a fair number of memes out there at the moment throwing rocks at people who “do their own research” (meaning reading a few articles online).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The point they are trying to make is not unreasonable – casual reading up on a subject doesn’t trump the results of professional researchers results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, reading the right sources is<\/em> research; not as valuable as academic research with all that extra “stuff”, but research nevertheless. The OED definition includes :-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To engage in research upon (a subject); to investigate or study closely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Doesn’t say a whole lot about publishing papers in a peer-reviewed journal, the scientific method, or all that other tedious stuff that separates the professional academic researcher from the amateur. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is of course a whole other post on how to do research properly in terms of background reading :-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Wikipedia may be a good start but it’s just that – a start.<\/li>
  2. You need to assess the trustworthiness of a source; if nobody trusts the source you’re reading it probably means the source can’t be trusted.<\/li>
  3. You’re looking for accepted wisdom; you need to do a lot<\/em> more work to start looking at the kooky stuff.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Unnatural Nature<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    There are a fair number of memes out there at the moment throwing rocks at people who “do their own research” (meaning reading a few articles online). The point they are trying to make is not unreasonable – casual reading up on a subject doesn’t trump the results of professional researchers results. On the other […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[2054,131],"class_list":["post-6048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-meme","tag-research","category-7-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1zy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6048"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6056,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6048\/revisions\/6056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}