If you’re trying to understand a topic in today’s world and you Google something, you need to understand a very important consequence.
The results that show up when you Google things are not showing up because they are the truth. They are showing up because that site figured out how to show up as #1 on Google searches. This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and it’s totally normal and commonplace. It’s not inherently bad—in fact, I use it to get more people to read these blog posts.
As we each move forward in our projects and lives, we interact with information. We interact with data and “facts.” There is a 0% probability that people today or children in the future will not interact with the internet in some way. In order to filter and manage this relationship, we must have an understanding of what is a primary source of information and what’s a secondary source of information. Here’s a nifty disambiguation by University of Massachusettes’ Healey Library.
Understanding sources helps us understand how much we can trust that information. Understanding the source lets us know how rigorously the data or information were analyzed or verified before publishing.
Here’s the point I’m trying to make:
Your article in the New England Journal of Medicine is not equivalent to my Googling.
One of my favorite authors and thinkers, Isaac Asimov, said it this way:
When I was a kid, my parents would say “you can’t trust people on the internet.” And they were right. Strangely, today, I see people reposting misinformation on Facebook without any evaluation or verification of where it came from. Just “like” and “retweet.”
As you develop expertise in your field, collect information to make a business decision, or create your lesson plan for your students, consider the source.
We are all responsible for how our world develops. Consider taking an extra few minutes to ask some follow-up questions to improve the quality of your searches.
I think most people probably aren’t creating new misinformation—I think most people are just carelessly retweeting it.