To wonder why a person who claims they have done 'extensive research'...

[Newrunner29]

...belives they are as knowledgeable as someone who has dedicated their career and have the relevant professional qualifications in a subject? It really fustrates me and makes me concerned for future.
I see on the Internet all the time this 'extensive research' line and think, what makes u more knowledgeable and also the line could literally mean anything.

I found this twitter feed which is loosely linked, even when confronted this person continues to spead misinformation. i would love to know why?
I would say there is a level of arrogance to it to.

The thing is, there are very few, if any, actual facts. True experts disagree about fundamental "facts".
Googling is better than blindly accepting something you're told because that person is smarter than you.

@OrganicBagel

But you don’t need qualifications to do your own research. What a cop out! I don’t need qualifications to research car safety. I don’t need to run my own crash test dummy trials or be a qualified engineer. I need to read the “research” that has already been done and THAT is my research. That’s what most research is! I work in a Uni research centre where academics do research which mainly involves reading results of trials and other people’s research papers and making their own conclusions, or analysing data from other people’s studies They don’t run the trials themselves but it doesn’t make them not researchers! I have a degree in statistics and policy analysis. I my doesn’t make me more or less of a researcher than someone who studied medicine or politics. Research isn’t a particular science! Anyone can do research. It is gathering data and information and making conclusions.

I can do my own research! says the person with a degree in stats and policy analysis 🤣🤷🏼‍♀️

I've got 5 degrees - including a PhD - I've done stats as part of my MSc, I absolutely know how to do research on any topic. I also know my own limitations in being able to critically evaluate and make sense of that research in any field which is not my own.

I have researched my own health conditions in order to understand the possible outcomes and treatments - I'm a scientist, I understand how to read science and medical research, but I wouldn't be daft enough to think I understood the research as well as someone who was an expert in that field.

@OrganicBagel

CatMandarin

The 'extensive research" usually just means "done a bit of googling of dodgy websites spouting bollocks"

You can’t possibly know what research someone has done unless they provide you with links to it. If that’s the only sort of research you yourself are capable of doing then that would explain why you might think this. I know there are crazy claims all over the internet and easing those is definitely not “research” but many of the “conspiracy theories” spouted online last year are now fact! There is often at least some truth behind them and researching these “crazy claims” often leads to actual evidence.

Which of the conspiracy theories are now fact?

I have a family member who has fallen down this rabbit hole and refuses to believe my Dr DHs direct experience of working on the Covid wards and having colleagues die.
He is a narcissist though and this is the latest crusade on why he is right and the rest of the world is wrong. Medical stuff was always an issue but not the only one, education, lifestyle, jobs etc
I'm fed up of battling this one and DH will probably never speak to him again after this.
I suspect that once a mutual relative we have care responsibilities for dies this may be the end of our relationship.
It's so exhausting and he gets so nasty about everything we do differently to them.
Whereas the rest of the family seem to understand that as more data becomes available things may change, that is the nature of a situation like this - this family member uses it as vindication that we are blinkered. No choices we make are acceptable yet we must accept his choices.
The language is vicious and cruel and his anger at the world frightening but this isn't the only time or topic this has attitude arisen it's just the time he's felt the most supported by others.

I think the difference between research and having read or watched something on a topic sometimes gets lost in discussions.

I think reporting on research doesn't help with that as it often makes it sound very definitive and clear but when pretty much any research paper will discuss its limitations, the risks so when other websites or videos use that same language, it can feel to some like research because that's how research has been portrayed to them. See also docutainment pieces.

Nuance tends to get lost with that style of research reporting - like the guy's original point with oxygen and carbon dioxide, I've heard actual medical professional state similar, but they were talking about people with respiratory conditions that have caused breathing patterns that get them through in daily life but may find masks harder to deal as their breathing pattern can cause the buildup mentioned and so may need support to work through that or exceptions. The breathing pattern issue is why we're not meant to wear masks for intense cardio.

This alongside systemic issues in research as well as issues in places like medical are also creating blocks as distrust there has people reaching for other community sources. Slightly related, but some former anti-vaxxers have discussed in trying to help uptake (mainly in the US which has had more issues there) what caused that path and coming off of it, and many stories involve medical abuse and neglect and finding a 'natural' community space that gave them the listening to that they didn't get in a medical setting.

Arrogance can definitely play a part, but I think there are many other pieces and there are limits and risks to digging into the issues this sort of thing causes if we're only looking at the arrogance. A lot of it is stemming from other emotions - fear, desire for control - and social issues.

@OrganicBagel

Newrunner29

But you are dismissing anyone who says they have done research as being a dim Twitter reader. I have been attacked on mumsnet many times for claiming I’ve researched something or other, and when grilled for my qualifications I have been met with rude responses such as “yeah sure thing!”....
So you may think that people claiming to have done extensive research actually have just read conspiracy theories, but I think that says more about your own lack of ability to do research than anyone else’s! 🤣

I have not said that, the problem is how do we distinguish between the 2 ends of this, the google youtube videos/fb etc to the genuinely used critical thinking reading studies. We cannot. And i think encouraging anyone to say they are 'extensively researching' even when they might be at the more acceptable end is still dangerous.

@Cuddlyrottweiler

The thing is, there are very few, if any, actual facts. True experts disagree about fundamental "facts". Googling is better than blindly accepting something you're told because that person is smarter than you.

Its not about general smartness its about literally knowing /working with and experiencing day to day the subject!

@Cuddlyrottweiler

The thing is, there are very few, if any, actual facts. True experts disagree about fundamental "facts". Googling is better than blindly accepting something you're told because that person is smarter than you.

Is there really less facts or are people becoming normalised to this notion of debating actual facts. Their are people who believe the earth is flat. Should we now no longer have that fact that earth is a sphere/round.

'Too many to put here.'

'Extensive research' these days usually means 'Someone told me about it down the pub, so I watched someone talking about it on youtube'. When you think you believe in something, then all your Google search results are just going to reinforce that view, aren't they?

It's called confirmation bias.

@Newrunner29 YANBU. I am sick of self-styled 'experts' spouting nonsense - and their views - as 'facts.' Happens a bit on mumsnet too!

@barskits

'Extensive research' these days usually means 'Someone told me about it down the pub, so I watched someone talking about it on youtube'. When you think you believe in something, then all your Google search results are just going to reinforce that view, aren't they?

It's called confirmation bias.

Yeah this.^

Hilarious, and yet worrying, that some people think that they know more than the people who have a university degree in the subject, and have studied it, and written about it, and ACTUALLY researched it extensively!

I blame Michael Gove and the Brexit campaign. This country has had enough of experts etc....

@Cuddlyrottweiler

I wish more people did their own research and made their own decisions rather than just accepting what they're told as fact. I don't like how easily people accept what they're told and obey people they've been told are above them. I think we train people from a young age to not challenge authority and it worries me.

Most people are not intelligent enough to interpret the research of world-renowned experts, let alone do their own research and reach a conclusion.

They are not really saying they know more just that they don't trust the experts saying things, especially if they don't agree with what is being said by the expert. Sometimes that is ok because there have been times in the past when the consensus of experts has turned out to be wrong but that really is not that often.

I think people who on principle mistrust experts or things that are the ' common consensus ' of experts ( and lots do) just think they can only trust themselves for anything. It is pride, ego and suspicion of others combined , they are common human faults really.

I read somewhere not sure if 100% true 🙂 that to have a belief about something we just need one other person to agree with us and the belief become set, before the internet this obviously wasnt as easy, but with the internet its very easy to find someone who belives the same as us due to the nature of so many people being about connect and obviously social media making even simpler and that is how crazy theories can start by just one person. I found this really fascinating i guess obvious when u think about it. Its definitely the dark side of the internet

So for example i could belive that blue eyed people were evil, before social media i would have probably kept to myself due to being a bit out there. I could now go online and find someone who agrees then more people follow and who know what that could lead to. I mean its obvious stuff but is scary thought.

I have put YABU because in some cases a patients extensive research and knowledge can be better if those they seek the help from. (If not a specialist etc)
(I’ve seen it first hand, with my own patients etc)

The case you’ve shown there though, absolutely YANBU.

Most people don't have degrees in statistics and analysis. Most people are unable to internet scientific data.

In the UK the literacy level of the average adult is that of a 12 year-old, for numeracy, it's that of a 9 year-old. For health literacy, it's nearer to that of the 9 year-old given the importance of understanding dosages etc. in a day-to-day setting.

As a population, we are very far from having an adequate understanding of numeracy and nowhere near the level of health literacy that would be useful in pandemic circumstances.

The govt. should have seized the day last year and commissioned research into:
– establishing just the level of communication that we would need to reach as many people as possible;
– how to upskill the adult population with appropriate teaching materials/support that meet people where they are rather than persisting with the sort of education that failed them in school.

Was slightly going off topic

The problems start when you ignore the fact that as well as being experts in their fields with years of experience and research behind them, academics are also human beings. They are just as vulnerable to the pressures of ego, hubris, politics and the need to stay employed as anyone else, and those factors can influence their work as much as any pure, disinterested science. So people we are supposed to respect and listen to start telling us that chromosomes, hormones, bone structure are less important than how someone identifies. And then it’s a much smaller step to think, well, if they’ll dissemble and obfuscate about that to suit an ideological agenda, why not about other things?

@Cuddlyrottweiler

I wish more people did their own research and made their own decisions rather than just accepting what they're told as fact. I don't like how easily people accept what they're told and obey people they've been told are above them. I think we train people from a young age to not challenge authority and it worries me.

Doing research and challenging authority are good things.

But in the vast majority of cases when this phrase gets trotted out in relation to COVID and vaccines it’s actually shorthand for “I have read some Facebook posts from some quack with an anti vaxx agenda”.

By all means do research, check sources and challenge authority.

But do so with critical analysis and recognition of the shortcomings of your perspective,

Recognise that someone with a PhD in biochemistry who has worked on clinical trials is probably more clued up than some hippy peddling “natural immunity”, for example.

@Cuddlyrottweiler

I wish more people did their own research and made their own decisions rather than just accepting what they're told as fact. I don't like how easily people accept what they're told and obey people they've been told are above them. I think we train people from a young age to not challenge authority and it worries me.

Unfortunately, “their own research” is a few Facebook memes and reading the biased news source of their choice that may mention a study, but it gets to “massage” the result. Do you think everyone is able to read an article printed in the Virology Journal, understand the whole thing, and then “make up their own minds”? You listen to your mechanic but ignore scientists.

Well, have at you. I mean, if you think you we can challenge authority, and stop letting the scientists tell us what to do, which means we do it all ourselves, here you go: virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12985-021-01641-w
Do you understand this whole article? And I’m not just talking about the intro and conclusion; the meat of the explanation.

More importantly, do you think you could have done the experiment? Do you understand its importance and how they did it and how you’d replicate it?

Because they’re trying to stop the next possible pandemic. And you think we should all just be “doing our own research and making our own decisions.” Well, go on then. Put on your gloves and get in the lab.

'Just accepting what they're told as fact'
This is my point. Surely we need facts to be accepted!

I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here because I'm somewhere in the middle of your POV and the poster you quoted.

I feel like this (your post) is about science, and facts, in a scientific context, are always up for inquiry. That is one of the points of science. That's what physicists get excited about.

Absolute truths are different. They're not up for inquiry and because of that, they're not a part of science. There is philosophical arguments and quantum mechanics stuff surrounding this that makes my head feel like it wants to explode, but for the purposes of this post absolute truths exist.

We are all born.

Circles are not square.

I'm not sure accepting facts (in the scientific context - currently accepted realities) is something we surely need or should want.

There would be no progress? Or at least, progress would be based on chances of accidental discovery, and chances of the potential of the discovery being questioned.

The world is flat
The sun orbits earth
The universe expansion is slowing down

All examples of accepted reality - facts - which are now no longer.

There is the argument that if we focused more on teaching critical thinking, we wouldn't need to spend so long teaching facts.

Using the phrase 'extensive research' is really just an indicator they haven't done any, are likely a person who believes in flat earth too and quite possibly is high most of the time. Not a combination, of any of that, is worth listening to, but they are fun to laugh at.