this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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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 (www.vice.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

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:

  • perform their own experiments to test their own ideas and prove them correct.
  • attend conferences of many scientists where ideas and findings are presented to everyone and open to comment/critique from everyone
  • communicate their thoughts or findings only once it has passed quality checks from reviewers and editors
  • have their whole career motivation based on getting published (through the above checks), discovering the actual truth and convincing the world of that truth.
  • generally treat all findings and thoughts with scepticism but with a view for finding the flaw and using that to disprove the finding or prove something new and better.
  • culturally value (to a fault) being intelligent, insightful and understanding as much as possible including an opponent’s findings and arguments.

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.