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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 L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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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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[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 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.