You Must Not ‘Do Your Own Research’

Typical Forbes ridiculousness.

While yes if you are bad at doing your own research it can lead you to make the wrong decisions, and some decisions you really don't want to get wrong, telling people not to learn about things and verify claims is beyond absurd. If institutions like Forbes put in the effort to write quality pieces which used verifiable evidence and sound logic to distinguish themselves from the absurd claims of fake news, there would be no issue.

Trust no one, especially those asking you to trust blindly.

If you are going to do your own research, ask yourself the question: would an actual expert researching this field, seeking the unvarnished truth, consider the source I'm looking at seriously? And you'll find there's a hierarchy with something like political blog posts by people purporting to be experts with dubious claims about their credentials at the bottom, to single published studies and scientific journalism sources somewhere in the middle, and things like meta analyses and literature reviews published in well respected journals near the top.

Opening paragraph: "“Research both sides and make up your own mind.” It’s simple, straightforward, common sense advice. And when it comes to issues like vaccinations, climate change, and the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, it can be dangerous, destructive, and even deadly. The techniques that most of us use to navigate most of our decisions in life — gathering information, evaluating it based on what we know, and choosing a course of action — can lead to spectacular failures when it comes to a scientific matter."

Its dangerous to trust your own judgement. Trust the experts. Thanks Forbes!

In reality, this is a ridiculous argument - its just 'appeal to authority'. It devalues the individual. If you don't value your own judgement you are beholden to companies, corporations, etc that may not be acting in your interests.

My favourite example for this is diabetes. If you don't eat carbs or sugar, you don't overload your body and don't need to enter the medical system. This is to say that I am claiming you can manage your condition with a careful diet only.

Which medical company would advise you to do that?! None. There is simply no profit in it. I hope I am conveying the principle, whether you accept my thesis or not - and if you are a diabetic you should test this for yourself. My main point is that you need to trust your individual judgement - corporations, governments, and their paid for experts are not 100% trustworthy.

Click-baity title, but another good article about the prevalence of biases that make getting the truth harder with the advent of the internet.

Overcoming confirmation bias is a daily struggle for me - it can be so incredibly easy to sit back and read articles that confirm what I _want_ to believe as true and accept that as proof my beliefs are well-founded. Looking for sources of raw data has helped in that regard - numbers tend not to lie as much. Representation can be skewed, though.

I don't know what to do now...

Does clicking on forbes count. Or only when I click on a different website and forbes count...

oh no not a 40% higher cavity rate! what a joke, just because there is a higher risk of cavities doesn't mean it's bad to want chemical free water