In working on the Research Plan I found myself doing a lot more research and coming up with results that I found very interesting –and very distracting! I also discovered that my attention to detail really needs rechecking. The MLA guide information almost slipped into obscurity, but at the last minute I reviewed the MLA and made corrections before posting.
It was a real relief to post the Research Plan. I enjoyed reading what others put together. The topics and research plans are very impressive. My feedback has been only to suggest other research sources.
In working on this weeks’ assignment, another issue of information evaluation came to mind, that of information spin.
So often, we don’t trust information provided us by those who stand to profit from giving out that information. If the advertisers are our only source of education, where does that leave us?
This happens every day in relation to our medical care. Pharmaceutical companies are coming up with new drugs all the time. In addition to publishing (and advertising) in medical journals, pharmaceutical company representatives visit doctors to inform them of new drugs.
In reading Jen’s post on Selecting Information Sources, I became aware of the filtering of information, but from the perspective of who is funding the research.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the independent researchers on EMF, Neil Cherry, rebutted research funded by the cell pone industry. Neil Cherry’s research showed conclusively that EMF indeed pose health risks. The industry sponsored research found otherwise, and concluded that EMF from cell phones is harmless. The industry researchers followed the same research –re-enacting Cherry’s same experiments. Cherry reviewed their research from beginning to end. The key difference between his research methods and theirs was this: his experiments used live subjects; theirs used post-mortem subjects. This accounted for the different findings. Anyone who did not know how to compare the research, or did not have access to the primary research could not determine this “nuance” that accounted for the different findings.
In a topic such as Jen’s GM foods, she will encounter a lot of industry sanitized findings. But how can the student or newbie to the field determine funding-inspired-spin from seemingly rabid tree-hugger perspectives?
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You raise a good question. Mary, and there's no simple answer. I think the first thing when you are doing research is to approach all of your sources with a critical eye, including those who are experts in the field you are researching. Because evem there. there's no guarantee that an expert is not biased or is spinning data and information to further an agenda of some sort. So how to figure this out? One way is to do some sleuthing on the author. Do a google search on their name; see if they have published anything else; look for any affiliations or connections that might indicate a bias in one direction or another. If you're reading a study, try to track down who funded the study. Always look for expertise and credentials and then take that one step further. With so much online, it is not too difficult to find a lot of this type of information.
Ideally you want to use sources that are objective but, as you say, it's not always easy to figure out whether they are objective or not. (And with some topics, it is hard to find an objective opinion.) It's also okay to use a source that takes a position, you just need to know they have a biase and be sure to seek out an alternative perspective.
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