As another episode in our "don't believe everything you hear" campaign, I decided to tell you about a scientific experiment I did a few years back with my students. I did this to teach them a lesson about first sources, primary sources, the reliability of the internet, and doing their own homework. Upset though they were at first, I know they were all grateful it didn't turn out to be a grade, and I decided to share it after telling my best friend I had done this.
For this particular assignment, I first had to do quite a bit of preparation. During the weeks immediately prior, I registered an account with wikipedia and spent time modifying the articles so that they were factually inaccurate. In at least two cases, I even linked to sources, one of which was unrelated, and the other of which was contradictory just to expose the process. Then, I gave the research assignment and waited for the responses.
Consistent with expectations, students turned in their work replete with plagiarism. Some of them hadn't even bothered to change the formatting from wikipedia or other internet resources. I took the most egregious of errors and made powerpoint slides of them to show the hazards on relying on the representations of others. In this particular case, someone had purposely and maliciously spun the information to deceive- and I was that person!
The fact of the matter is that many people purposely and maliciously spin information to deceive. Some of them do it innocently, and a rare few do it by accident, but by and large, people do what they do with an agenda. God forbid they do so with an ulterior motive! I have seen people change data, hide results, omit things, and add things that are not there, as I did in this experiment. They do this to protect data for further research, to protect their reputations, to advance their careers, to embarrass their opponents, and to destroy their enemies. In my case, I discovered that we began our research in graduate school based on half truths and whole lies, which resulted only in a waste of time, money, effort, and hope. At least nobody was hurt.
Sometimes people are not so lucky and lose something precious to them. However, as I wrote before, we rely too much on second hand information and what other people tell us is so. In many cases we justify this because the people have titles. Are their titles legitimate? Are the processes by which men get titles good ones? Shoot, I can forge patents of nobility, but calling me a cantaloupe makes me not a melon. I tell my students that everyone has an agenda. God is the only one who acts without any ulterior motives.
I know we are taught to be trusting. I have learned that people may mean what they say, and they also mean other things. We let ourselves hear what we like. We pass on things that validate us. We support people who make us feel important. We look to whom is right rather than what is right. Then we rely on what people represent to us without looking to what they represent by the way they live.
You can say anything you like and post whatever you like to the internet. The number of people who pass it on indicates less so how valid it is as much as it indicates how popular it is. The popularity of something is a poor measurement of something's quality or value.
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