Week 3: Discussion 1 and 2

This week we will focus on the principles of research and the differences between popular and scholarly sources.

Knowing how to collect information from the Internet and communicate in a networked world is critical. In order to find our ways in the world, to make important decisions, to improve job performance and career opportunities, and to participate in our society as citizens to the best of our ability, we need to know where to turn for the latest, most current, and best information.

The popular, mass media are not a good source of information. It may be one of the worst sources for information. Basing decisions on the opinions of those who are ill-informed, uneducated, or biased (socially, culturally, or politically) is not a good idea. We should not rely on sources like Wikipedia or other websites because they may also be biased or present incorrect or incomplete information. To be well-informed, both personally and professionally, as educated, reasonable adults, we need to use the best sources of information and apply the principles of logic and critical thinking to the information from the best sources of information.

Having researched and done some careful thinking, we must also consider alternatives, and before reaching a decision, we need to check ourselves for possible bias or for having reached a foregone conclusion based on our personal perceptions of life, the universe and everything.

We are all born with a natural sense of curiosity. That curiosity drives us, when young to be a font of “Why?” or “How?” or “What’s that?” questions. As we grow older, though, most of us quit asking those types of questions as they are so often answered with “Quit asking so many questions!” or “Just because”. Others of us learn to accept “Because that’s just how it is.” There are a few of us, thankfully, who never leave behind that sense of curiosity. Those people keep on asking all of the Big W questions: Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why.

Many of those people eventually settle on a particular question that puzzles them beyond anything else. Such people tend to reach high school knowing for sure what they want to spend the rest of their lives studying; indeed, some of those people have already been studying that question since they entered school the very first day. In many cases those people already know which college they want to go to because that particular school has a reputation for being in the forefront of research into that question.

Musicians will pick one of a handful of schools. Paleontologists and archaeologists know which schools are the best for them, as do engineers, astronomers, physicists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and so on and so forth.

When those people (overwhelmed by their need to know) get to college they throw themselves into obsessive research about their topic. They work with other students, with graduate students, and with their professors in research projects. As they learn things and find out things, they will write papers that present their research findings. Then they submit those papers to appropriate journals. That will continue as they work their way through college and out into the real world of research and will continue for the rest of their lives. They will build upon the work of all the researchers who went before them. Astronomers will continue to build on the work of thousands of years of study as will medical researchers.

As they work, they will become increasingly more narrowly focused on essential questions. For instance, a student may start out studying cancer, then become interested in the genetic basis for certain types of cancer, and then focus on the way in which a particular protein effects the chromosomes in cells that become cancerous. Her research will be written and submitted to a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal.

In simplest terms, a scholarly journal is publishes the papers that researchers write. They present the current information gathered from experts and scholars all over the world… and in many different languages. They also publish the work of junior researchers when the information in their reports is deemed significant to a particular field of study.

On the Internet, anyone can buy a webpage, buy a .ORG suffix, and post anything they want to, no matter how crazy it is, even if that person has not spent 24 years in college learning and 24 more years researching the subject. Some people think they can browse Internet sites for a couple of years and imagine that they know more than all of the people, back by thousands of years of research, who have spent their entire lives studying a subject obsessively and into the finest details. There are even people who research the teeth of the fossilized remains of ancient hominin species like Australopithecus. You may not find that interesting or informative, but for some of us, it is very interesting, intriguing, and informative about more than “how do teeth grow?”

Yes, Virginia, there are people who think they can become instant experts over the Internet. That is not possible. It takes a lifetime of hard, intense research and study. And even then you can make mistakes. All of us make mistakes, and all of the scholars, scientists, researchers, and philosophers know that they can be wrong. That’s why, before their work is published, they submit it to a peer-reviewed journal.

Peer review in the academic, scholarly, scientific, medical, or professional fields is not like the peer reviewing you have done in school. Peer review is a rigorous examination of the papers that are submitted for publication. The papers will be submitted, usually in the blind, to teams of experts who are acknowledged as the best in their field. Those experts will review the paper (without knowing who the author is) to make sure that the research was conducted correctly, that the number crunching was handled correctly, and that the conclusions presented in the paper are in accordance with the thousands of years of research that have been done and that the new research reveals something important or significant—that it adds to our body of knowledge and that others need to know about this research.

The review committee will check every detail of the report to make sure it comes up to the standards of their field of study. They may reject the paper outright if it does not meet their standards. They may return the paper for further research and revision. They may accept the paper for publication. So you see, it’s not just your teachers who send papers back for further work. It keeps on going.

In this case, “peer review” refers not to your peers here in college; rather, it refers to the experts who are nationally or internationally renowned in their field of study as being of such high standing with years of successful research and publication, that they can pass sound, correct judgement on the work of others. They do this to make sure that “junk science” does not make it into print. Not to overly stress a point, but in some of those journals, bad research can lead to suffering, misery, and or death.

After a report, article, essay, or finding is determined to be of high enough standard and significant enough addition to the body of research, it is finally published.

Everybody who is interested in any particular field of study can then read those reports to stay informed about the current, best available information. This is why, for instance, the best surgeons and physicians read the medical journals that are pertinent to their particular specialization. Physicians and surgeons who work with children with cancer will read something like the Journal of Juvenile Oncology. If they don’t keep up on the research, they may either misdiagnose or mistreat a patient, leading to the patient’s continuing suffering and perhaps even death. But it’s not just physicians and surgeons who need to keep up on the research. Construction engineers need to keep up on the research so they know how to build better, stronger, safer, more efficient buildings. The people who design and build airplanes will obviously need to stay constantly up to date on the research in their fields.

If your career is in one of the professions or academic fields, you will need already to have chosen the particular, special journals that are relevant to your career and to be reading them regularly. Otherwise, your career will suffer. In fact, your career may not even get off the ground if you go to an interview and someone asks, “What did you think of <name of researcher>’s article in the <name of journal>?” If you have never even heard of that journal or heard of that research, your interview is dead in the water.

But, you say, I am not in any of those scientific, medical, or professional fields, so I don’t need to read any of that stuff. Please remember that you are a citizen in a representative Constitutional republic where you have a voice in what happens locally, regionally, and nationally. What happens in your region and in our nation also has effects on other nations, regions, and people all over the world. That’s why we have to be concerned about “global citizen,” because what we do affects other people who are just like you - just living somewhere else.

Here are some additional resources for you to use in order to better understand the concept of peer-reviewed journals and their purpose:

Recognizing Peer Reviews:

Here is a checklist of the weekly activities. Keep this handy as you move through the weekly tasks.

References

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Conquer Cancer Foundation [ConquerCanderFdtn]. (2014, June 10). Conquer Cancer Foundation: Why is peer review important and why do we do it?Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgDQVBk5JnM

CSUF Pollak Library [csufpollaklibrary]. (2008, September 03) What are scholarly and peer-reviewed articles? [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUX1gYBPPFQ

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Libncsu. (2014, May 1). Peer review in 3 minutes [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=rOCQZ7QnoN0

MedicalAppJournal. (2012, July 26). Peer review – Why it’s important (medical apps) [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_rHXLb7E94

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Physics world [Photograph]. (2011). Retrieved from https://physicsworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/hei1-1-635x435.jpg