If you’re “searching for things on the Internet” or “watching YouTube videos” or “reading articles,” some say you aren’t “doing your own research” but merely “consuming content”—an activity as enlightening as fondling yourself while arguing with Chinese bots on Twitter.
This plays well with the peanut gallery because, as Aldous Huxley noted, the opportunity to maltreat others with good conscience, to misbehave as a form of “righteous indignation,” is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
What is “research,” though?
The hecklers will often say something like, “it’s skillfully reviewing every study you can find on the matter and determining the balance of the evidence.”
So basically, unless you’re a trained scientist, you can't “do research” and come to good conclusions but only “consume content” and continue to be clueless.
Sorry, sweetie.
Webster’s disagrees, though. It says research is “studious inquiry or examination” (with “studious” meaning “marked by or suggesting purposefulness or diligence”) and even “the collecting of information about a particular subject.”
Ferreting around on the internet to find things to watch, read, and listen to is in fact “doing research,” then. The crux, however, is how you go about it. Are you doing good research?
And that requires more than just scientific literacy.
You have to understand the grammar of logic. You have to seek the strongest counterpoints to your preferred theories. It helps to be conversant in assorted mental models, philosophical razors, and cognitive forcing strategies.
Thus, there are many ways for science-minded folk and laypeople alike to do bad research—selection biases, confirmation biases, disconfirmation biases, conformity biases, selective skepticism, faulty generalization, the list yammers on.
To suggest, however, that only formally educated specialists can “do good research” is like suggesting that only porn (das)star(d)s can have a good tumble.
So, a more accurate meme would state only that many people aren’t good at research, but where’s the fun in that? No righteous indignation. No psychological luxury. No moral treat. MAYBE IT'S TIME WE ALL GROW UP.
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