Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I am an editor here at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. Sitting across from me as usual, at least
Speaker 1: as far as when I looked it up last, is
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. There's special providence in the fall
Speaker 1: of a sparrow. Okay, and guess what, guys, it's your
Speaker 1: job to look that up and tell me where it's from.
Speaker 1: Special listener challenge. Yeah, it's it's easy enough. Um. So
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about conducting research online. I'll to
Speaker 1: use online tools to research. Because a lot of you
Speaker 1: out there are in middle school and high school. We
Speaker 1: get emails from you all the time, and first of all,
Speaker 1: shout out to all of you guys. You guys are
Speaker 1: awesome and keep up the great work, especially listening to
Speaker 1: wonderful podcasts like ours. But beyond that, we've also received
Speaker 1: email from others who have asked us about research techniques.
Speaker 1: UM see uh Is and Marie Right and Marie I
Speaker 1: see I didn't write your name down, Emory. I apologize.
Speaker 1: And Marie has written to us on a couple of
Speaker 1: occasions asking if we might address research techniques and citations
Speaker 1: things like that. Well, really, the whole citations element is
Speaker 1: kind of outside the scope of tech stuff, but we
Speaker 1: can certainly address how to conduct research online and how
Speaker 1: to get the best information for whatever it is that
Speaker 1: you're searching for. UM, because a lot of us are
Speaker 1: just simply using Google in the most basic way and
Speaker 1: not getting the best information. Google is doing a lot
Speaker 1: behind the scenes to try and give us the best
Speaker 1: information based upon what we tell Google we want to see,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it has to make guesses. Sometimes the keywords
Speaker 1: we throw in there are just a mishmash, and Google's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'll give you this. I think it's what you want.
Speaker 1: But there are ways where you can you can refine
Speaker 1: your search, whether you're using Google or some other search methods,
Speaker 1: some other search engine. I use Google because it's almost
Speaker 1: become like xerox or Kleenex the universal term, but I
Speaker 1: do realize that people use other search engines. Um, there
Speaker 1: are techniques you can use to get the best information possible. Yes, UM,
Speaker 1: actually I would recommend this really groovy article on how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com about the Google algorithm and what
Speaker 1: makes it so special. I was written by as a hack,
Speaker 1: some guy Strickland. Anyway, Yeah, if you if you're really
Speaker 1: interested in knowing how Google specifically works, because Google sort
Speaker 1: of revolutionized the search industry online. I mean for many
Speaker 1: years when Yahoo was doing everybody loved Yahoo, but they
Speaker 1: were doing it by end, which is actually a very
Speaker 1: effective way to do it, except in that it requires
Speaker 1: a lot of people and a lot of time to
Speaker 1: do that, which and of course, as more people joined
Speaker 1: the Internet, more content was created on the Internet, meaning
Speaker 1: more content had to be sorted through, so it becomes
Speaker 1: a losing game eventually, because unless you have hired everyone
Speaker 1: on the planet to also help categorize and rank information,
Speaker 1: you just can't keep up with the amount of info
Speaker 1: that's out there. So Google's algorithm helped automate that, so
Speaker 1: you didn't have to worry about doing it by hand. Yes,
Speaker 1: but I know you did want to to speak on
Speaker 1: a specific tactic if you want to use Google more effectively. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit about bullying logic. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's named after George bole Yes and bullying logic is
Speaker 1: a fairly complex UH concept, but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: mathematical concept, right. It's a way, it's the way of
Speaker 1: using operators to UH to make an argument or search
Speaker 1: for information. As it turns out, because a lot of
Speaker 1: arch engines are very good at at incorporating Boolean logic,
Speaker 1: so not all of them, not all of them, and
Speaker 1: some of them have a specific advanced search function that
Speaker 1: makes this even easier. But we're going to go through
Speaker 1: the basic operators and what they do and what they
Speaker 1: mean within most search engines, and then we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit maybe about advanced search options, and then we'll
Speaker 1: go into more detail about other other things online that
Speaker 1: you can use for for research. So the basic operators
Speaker 1: and Boolean logic, as far as it pertains to search,
Speaker 1: are and or and not. Okay, So I'll start with OR.
Speaker 1: Now OR helps you increase your your range of searches.
Speaker 1: You know your search results. You're gonna get a wider
Speaker 1: range of search results using or as an operator. And
Speaker 1: this lets you search for two terms. Usually you're using
Speaker 1: two terms that are kind of interchangeable or mean more
Speaker 1: or less the same thing. Um and you use that
Speaker 1: to try and get a wider net of results. So
Speaker 1: you might say, uh, dogs or canines in your search,
Speaker 1: and then you're going to get search results that have
Speaker 1: the keyword dogs or canines featured in them in some way,
Speaker 1: because some results may use one term and the others
Speaker 1: may use another, and you want to be able to
Speaker 1: see everything that's out there, So you're gonna get more
Speaker 1: results that way than if you search for just dogs
Speaker 1: or just canines. Um. Now, if you use and, you
Speaker 1: might think, oh, well, doesn't that do the same thing. Actually, no,
Speaker 1: and narrows your search because with and, it's going to
Speaker 1: look for search results that have both terms. And when
Speaker 1: I say both, you should keep in mind this is
Speaker 1: not limited to just to search terms. Technically, you can
Speaker 1: throw in as many search terms as you want and uh,
Speaker 1: it just is going to continually narrow your field of arch.
Speaker 1: So in this case, you may want to look for
Speaker 1: let's let's say you're searching for horror and science fiction.
Speaker 1: You're only going to get results that have both of
Speaker 1: those terms in them. Right now, if you use horror
Speaker 1: or science fiction, you would get all of them had
Speaker 1: either or both of those terms. So and narrows your search.
Speaker 1: This can be really helpful if you're looking for specific
Speaker 1: news about a particular topic. So if you did Gulf
Speaker 1: of Mexico and oil spill and solutions, that would help
Speaker 1: you narrow your search to potential solutions to fix the
Speaker 1: oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, right theoretically anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: and then there is think you think the company would
Speaker 1: have lifted those up? Yeah? Oh, there it is. It's
Speaker 1: on Google. Oh we're gonna get male. I'm kidding, BP,
Speaker 1: Please don't send your goons after us. I notice I
Speaker 1: didn't say who it was son of up. So anyway,
Speaker 1: let's get to the third one. Not now not helps
Speaker 1: you get search results for one term and excludes results
Speaker 1: that contain a specific related term. So let's say that
Speaker 1: you want to do a research on on mice but
Speaker 1: not you don't want anything to do about rats, So
Speaker 1: you could do a search for mice not rats, and
Speaker 1: you would only get search results that talked about mice.
Speaker 1: If rats were mentioned in the search, in the in
Speaker 1: the in the page, it would be excluded from the
Speaker 1: search results. So again, it's another way to narrow your
Speaker 1: search so that you don't get information that is not
Speaker 1: relevant to what you need. Now, advanced search options usually
Speaker 1: make this easier because I mean, you can type these
Speaker 1: things in actually, and you usually don't need to type
Speaker 1: in at all. That's understood. If you just do a
Speaker 1: string of keywords in your search, it's the search engine
Speaker 1: generally a suit whoms that you mean and Yes, But
Speaker 1: when you're using the bullion operators um, if you really
Speaker 1: specifically want to use them, you do need to put
Speaker 1: them in all caps yes, because because that's that's the
Speaker 1: thing that tells it, Oh, you specifically want these things.
Speaker 1: And if you're looking for a specific search string which
Speaker 1: includes things uh, words that would normally be discarded called
Speaker 1: stop wards, things like and and the um, because it's
Speaker 1: looking for the big words in the title, the things
Speaker 1: that are are unique and those words, those stop wards
Speaker 1: are so common that Google it's meaningless to do a
Speaker 1: search for them. Yes, you can do a search for
Speaker 1: the UM, but Google just says everything. But if you
Speaker 1: will allow me to to bore everyone but probably the
Speaker 1: educators and library geeks among you, since I just got
Speaker 1: my degree and I want to use it for something. UM.
Speaker 1: We're talking about two things here called precision and recall Um,
Speaker 1: these things are inversely proportional. So the more precise your
Speaker 1: search results are, the let the fewer of them you're
Speaker 1: going to get, and vice versa, or increases your recall.
Speaker 1: So you're going to get lots and lots and lots
Speaker 1: of stuff, but you're not going to have very precise results.
Speaker 1: If you want precision, you need to narrow it down, um,
Speaker 1: using and and and you know to some degree not
Speaker 1: or yeah, um wait not yes, okay, UM, So just
Speaker 1: keep in mind what you're trying to do. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people when they are looking
Speaker 1: for information kind of like poking around, you know, the
Speaker 1: serendipity search, What am I gonna find? Want to do this?
Speaker 1: But if you're in a hurry, boolean operators can really
Speaker 1: be your friend. Yeah. And as as I was saying
Speaker 1: earlier about advanced search options, these usually if you if
Speaker 1: you choose the advanced search option on a on a
Speaker 1: search engine, and I'm going to stick with Google because
Speaker 1: that's just well, it's a popular one. It's easy to
Speaker 1: talk about. Um. It usually opens up a a a
Speaker 1: new screen with additional options for search. So it'll have
Speaker 1: one field where you can type in all the keywords
Speaker 1: that you want that you that should appear in the
Speaker 1: search result, and may have a separate field for any
Speaker 1: keywords that you do not want to be in your
Speaker 1: search result. So that would be the not feature. The
Speaker 1: first one was the end. The other one, or actually
Speaker 1: I guess the first one that's the first one is
Speaker 1: the end because all of them do appear. They also
Speaker 1: have once where you can say this or that you
Speaker 1: know anything that has this or that should come back
Speaker 1: to me. Um. So it incorporates the boolean logic in
Speaker 1: actual little fields that you fill out, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to remember the operators or or type them in
Speaker 1: or anything, because you just type this, You type the
Speaker 1: right keywords in the right fields, and it does it
Speaker 1: for you. But it also gives you other options. Uh.
Speaker 1: For example, you can search for exact phrasing, which you
Speaker 1: can actually do in a regular search engine. You just
Speaker 1: have to know to put it into quotation marks. Yes,
Speaker 1: like anything within quotation marks, the search engine interprets that
Speaker 1: as look for this specific sequence of words. So nuclear radiation,
Speaker 1: for example, if you put that within quotation marks, it
Speaker 1: would look for search results that use the phrase nuclear radiation,
Speaker 1: which theoretically would get you closer to the results you need,
Speaker 1: because you know you don't want articles just on radiation
Speaker 1: in general, because not all radiation is nuclear, So you know,
Speaker 1: this would help you narrow that search. Again, it's another
Speaker 1: way of narrowing. But it can also do things like
Speaker 1: Google's will allow you to search for specific file types.
Speaker 1: So if you're looking for like you know that you
Speaker 1: saw an article online once and it was in PDF
Speaker 1: format but you can't quite remember, you know, you can
Speaker 1: narrow your search that way and say just PDFs and
Speaker 1: Google will look for just pds online. Um, that's just
Speaker 1: one example. Obviously, Uh, it allows you to search within
Speaker 1: a domain. You can also do this in the general
Speaker 1: search bar if you know the right trick, which is
Speaker 1: really just typing site s I T E. Colon, then
Speaker 1: the address of the or the domain of the site
Speaker 1: that you're searching, and then whatever your search terms are
Speaker 1: that will do perform a Google search within a specific domain.
Speaker 1: So let's say that you happen to know that the
Speaker 1: information that you're looking for was in an article that
Speaker 1: appeared on the register, you could you could use the
Speaker 1: that to specify the search so that way it doesn't
Speaker 1: look anywhere else for this information, you're not going to
Speaker 1: get any irrelevant results from other sites. Uh. It can
Speaker 1: definitely be a time saver. It's really helped me out
Speaker 1: many many times. You can even do that on on
Speaker 1: parts of the site if you happen to know if
Speaker 1: it's if it's divided. For example, if you were looking
Speaker 1: on how stuff works dot com for um, just to
Speaker 1: stick with name recognition, if we have a number of
Speaker 1: articles on Google um, and most of those are in
Speaker 1: the computer channel, so as computer dot how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com instead of www dot how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: But let's say you were interested in finding a video,
Speaker 1: you could do site colon videos dot how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and see and then put a space in
Speaker 1: there in type Google and if you it should returns
Speaker 1: just that the results from that video channel. And of
Speaker 1: course it's going to depend on the information architecture of
Speaker 1: the site and whether or not that's possible. But for example,
Speaker 1: you know, that's why I picked how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com because I know it works with our site and
Speaker 1: it's easier to find articles if you happen to now um.
Speaker 1: But it also sort of depends on how well you
Speaker 1: know this site that you're searching. Yeah, and and the
Speaker 1: advanced search also allows you to do other things like
Speaker 1: you can search within a range of dates, so you
Speaker 1: can look for information that was that you know was
Speaker 1: uploaded at a specific time. Um. If you know something
Speaker 1: like maybe it's an article that appeared last spring, then
Speaker 1: you can put in a range of dates. Again, you're
Speaker 1: excluding anything that falls outside that range. You don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about sorting through other stuff. Um. You can
Speaker 1: even search for results based on the usage rights. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: this is going to depend mainly upon the metadata that
Speaker 1: is in the the web page. This is something that
Speaker 1: the administrator of that web page has to include so
Speaker 1: that Google can can identify it. Because Google is not
Speaker 1: quite smart enough yet to know the usage rights of
Speaker 1: every single web page it's out there. Um, because in
Speaker 1: some cases it may not even be explicitly stated. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then you know, you can even uh specify where on
Speaker 1: the web page the keywords should appear, which allows you
Speaker 1: to search. Let's say that you want to search for
Speaker 1: articles that are about a specific topic, but you don't
Speaker 1: want to get back articles that just kind of have
Speaker 1: a little aside about that topic. You can actually have
Speaker 1: it so that it's only the pages that have the
Speaker 1: keywords within the page title, which theoretically should get you
Speaker 1: results that are more relevant to your search. So really,
Speaker 1: advanced search is a huge boon. I mean that's that alone.
Speaker 1: For we even get into anything more specific. Will really
Speaker 1: help help you narrow down your searches so that you
Speaker 1: can get at relevant information quickly. Now, again, Google does
Speaker 1: a pretty good job at at having the relevant search
Speaker 1: most relevant things to your keywords at any rate appear
Speaker 1: at the top of the list, so you normally don't
Speaker 1: have to dig down too far. Um. It's not always
Speaker 1: the case, but they do a pretty good job of it. Yes,
Speaker 1: excuse me, well, Chris got all choked up. Yes I did.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, they talk about the search topics. Um.
Speaker 1: Actually that's a good point, Jonathan, because um, I was
Speaker 1: just going to mention that, Uh, you might look at
Speaker 1: if you've ever played around, especially right after Being came
Speaker 1: out Microsoft launch Being, people were playing around with it
Speaker 1: to see how the results compared to Google. And you
Speaker 1: can put in the same topic on a Being search
Speaker 1: and a a Google search, and they're going to turn
Speaker 1: up probably some of the same results on the first page,
Speaker 1: but not necessarily all of them. They might be ranked differently. UM.
Speaker 1: If you are a fan of one or the other,
Speaker 1: you might go, well, mind, my favorite is the best.
Speaker 1: Well maybe not necessarily. It sort of depends on the topic.
Speaker 1: And one way to to sort of get everybody together
Speaker 1: um is to use a meta search engine, something like
Speaker 1: dogpile or um or surf wax for example surf wax
Speaker 1: dot com, and both of these use search multiple search
Speaker 1: engines at the same time, so it will look for
Speaker 1: the topic you request on Google and bing and Yahoo
Speaker 1: and ask dot com and possibly even Excite and Lycos
Speaker 1: and some of the others that have been around for
Speaker 1: a long time that use different methods to rank pages.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people really really like the meta
Speaker 1: search engines. I know that that some of the people
Speaker 1: here at how stuff works dot com are are really
Speaker 1: fond of of a couple of them because they're not
Speaker 1: h they give you sort of a more in depth
Speaker 1: look at how the different sites rank the articles. And
Speaker 1: it's possible that use in different search engine might give
Speaker 1: you better results for any particular topic. Right, so you
Speaker 1: might use Google for one search and being for a
Speaker 1: different search, or asked dot com for a different search,
Speaker 1: just depending on the results. Because one you may be
Speaker 1: looking for something particular that you know, one search engine
Speaker 1: turns up and the other does not, especially when you
Speaker 1: consider that the algorithms these different search engines use can
Speaker 1: UH that can determine what results you get on one
Speaker 1: day to the next. You can do the exact same
Speaker 1: Google search or search on Being or any other real
Speaker 1: search engine that relies upon an algorithm, you can do
Speaker 1: with that search on various dates and get completely different
Speaker 1: results based upon how those pages rank UH due to
Speaker 1: the algorithm. So now some are going to change less
Speaker 1: frequently than others. Some you may do the search and
Speaker 1: then it will look the exact same way six months
Speaker 1: from now, but others, like you know, Google definitely does
Speaker 1: change over time. If you do the same search result
Speaker 1: or same search I'm sorry key words, UM, you'll get
Speaker 1: different results sometimes from one day to the next, sometimes
Speaker 1: one morning to one afternoon. UM. It kind of depends
Speaker 1: upon the topic and whether or not, especially since Google
Speaker 1: will search across multiple UH features, like there's Google News
Speaker 1: where you'll get the latest articles. That's obviously going to
Speaker 1: change pretty rapidly compared to the more static web pages
Speaker 1: that are about a general topic. Right, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of people noticed a couple of months ago when
Speaker 1: Google will change the search results page because down the
Speaker 1: left side of the bar, now you've got you know, everything, news, images, books, blog,
Speaker 1: shopping and all those other topics. And people either loved
Speaker 1: it or hated it. Um. I'm one of the people
Speaker 1: who happens to like it actually, But I mean that's
Speaker 1: that's a different Basically, they're grouping, they're sort of breaking
Speaker 1: it down for you into commonly searched topics like images.
Speaker 1: You can think of like the general search as pot pourri.
Speaker 1: It's everything, but you can break it down into smaller
Speaker 1: groups U. And another one that would might be of
Speaker 1: particular help to students is Google scholar, which allows you
Speaker 1: to search scholarly articles, journals. UM. It allows you to
Speaker 1: look at patents, UH, and even legal opinions if you
Speaker 1: if you want to enable that, you can, and you
Speaker 1: can choose which options to enable and which ones to
Speaker 1: leave out. So if you don't want any results that
Speaker 1: have to do with patents, you can click a little
Speaker 1: checkbox and it will leave those results out. And UH,
Speaker 1: that can definitely help you find specific scholarly articles about subjects. Now,
Speaker 1: I should hasten to add that does not necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that you'll be able to go to a link and
Speaker 1: read the article in full. Many of these journals are
Speaker 1: online have an online journal where you have to have
Speaker 1: a subscription in order to access that journal. So it
Speaker 1: maybe that you'll be able to read an excerpt, but
Speaker 1: you won't get the full article. In order to do that,
Speaker 1: you'll need some other tool. A lot of schools, UM
Speaker 1: and a lot of library systems have a database or
Speaker 1: a search engine that's similar in style to Google, but
Speaker 1: specifically for this kind of thing, where you do get
Speaker 1: access to the full articles. UM. Depending on who designed
Speaker 1: that system, it may or may not be as user
Speaker 1: friendly as your as your general search engine, but you
Speaker 1: may need access to something like that. Now, a lot
Speaker 1: of school systems do have this UH, so it's good
Speaker 1: to to find out if yours does, UM and and
Speaker 1: make use of it. We mentioned in a previous podcast
Speaker 1: about education and technology. Then in Georgia we have a
Speaker 1: system called Galileo, and in Galileo we can search these
Speaker 1: scholarly articles and get access to the full article without
Speaker 1: having a specific um uh subscription to that particular publication.
Speaker 1: UM that that's really helpful now, granted, even then you're
Speaker 1: going to be limited by whatever range of journals that
Speaker 1: particular service has access to. It's not necessarily going to
Speaker 1: have access to every single journal that is out there,
Speaker 1: but that that can sometimes pick up the slack that
Speaker 1: the Google will leave, because Google has no control over
Speaker 1: what the actual content is on these pages, and in
Speaker 1: some cases, like I said, it may just be an
Speaker 1: excerpt which can give you some helpful like guidance, but
Speaker 1: it's not going to give you the information you necessarily
Speaker 1: need for an academic paper. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: things that I think we should address to now that
Speaker 1: we're getting into the more mature part of our podcast.
Speaker 1: So let's get that very web music in here. No no, no, wait,
Speaker 1: not that I was short of you using that as
Speaker 1: a euphemism as saying, we're slowly running out of time
Speaker 1: and probably should address some other things. Not alright, go Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think we should address
Speaker 1: is quality of resources. Yes, actually, one of the things
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about was primary versus secondary. Yes. Yes,
Speaker 1: what I was basically getting into was, um, you know,
Speaker 1: as we have mentioned many many times in the podcast,
Speaker 1: especially during the education series, we do have a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners who are still in school, And I want
Speaker 1: to stress to all of you that not everything you
Speaker 1: read on the internet is accurate or yes, you have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind where the information is coming from,
Speaker 1: who it's coming from, and whether or not things may
Speaker 1: have been biased. For example, maybe you're reading something that
Speaker 1: from a source that you do trust pretty well, and
Speaker 1: they say that a study financed by you know, the
Speaker 1: ACME Soup Corporation says that soup is beneficial to your eyesight,
Speaker 1: and you're going, okay, well, that's great. Apparently soup is
Speaker 1: beneficial to your eyesight. But and then you think about it.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, the people funding the study have a soupy.
Speaker 1: They see a direct benefit from the increase of super
Speaker 1: consumption exactly. So I mean, it may even be from
Speaker 1: a reasonably trusted resource, and maybe it came from a
Speaker 1: press release from the company, and perhaps it's true, but
Speaker 1: they do have a season for people to spread the
Speaker 1: good news about soup. Now, there does come a point
Speaker 1: where you eventually have to take that leap and and
Speaker 1: say that whoever it is that did that provide this
Speaker 1: information did so in good faith and without bias, Because
Speaker 1: ultimately all these when we think of scientific research and
Speaker 1: or research in general. Really, the money to fund that
Speaker 1: research has to come from somewhere. Sure, and if you
Speaker 1: play the money tracing game to to ludicrous levels, it's
Speaker 1: going to seem like nothing out there is reliable. But
Speaker 1: there are some cases where this is far more obvious
Speaker 1: than others, where you're saying, Okay, well, this this particular
Speaker 1: study is suspect because it's directly funded by this company
Speaker 1: that has a vested interest, and the results of the
Speaker 1: study seem to favor that company. That would be enough
Speaker 1: to maybe give you pause to say, maybe I need
Speaker 1: to find another study, not necessarily say that this one's
Speaker 1: wrong out of hand, but at least find some other
Speaker 1: um research out there that either corroborates or refutes the
Speaker 1: evidence of that particular study before just leaping on and
Speaker 1: saying Okay, this is what I'm going to use as
Speaker 1: a source on my paper. Yeah. Um, but I was
Speaker 1: going to. I did mention primary versus secondary sources. Some
Speaker 1: of you may not really know what that means. Uh.
Speaker 1: We talked about a little bit in our our Wikis
Speaker 1: episode because we talked about how Wikipedia is not supposed
Speaker 1: to be used as a primary source. Primary source is Essentially,
Speaker 1: it's the originator of any particular data. It's the original
Speaker 1: source of some form of information. So a primary source
Speaker 1: could include a scientific report that summarizes a specific experiment.
Speaker 1: That would be a good primary source. So that's a
Speaker 1: direct communication from the people who conducted the study to
Speaker 1: the people who are interested in reading about it. Now,
Speaker 1: a secondary source is kind of an intermediary. That's that's
Speaker 1: a source that's reporting or relaying that information, but it
Speaker 1: is not uh, directly responsible for creating that information. So, uh,
Speaker 1: Scientific American could be a good example here. Uh, they
Speaker 1: do some excellent articles, but it's reporting. You know, most
Speaker 1: the articles in Scientific American would be something where it's
Speaker 1: reporting on a study and it's trying to report the
Speaker 1: results in a way that is um easily understandable by
Speaker 1: the readership of Scientific American. So it's still a secondary
Speaker 1: source if you want, if you want to cite a
Speaker 1: primary source, you need to actually go to the study
Speaker 1: that's mentioned in the secondary source and read it yourself.
Speaker 1: Because whether we mean to or not, we have to
Speaker 1: filter information through our own uh you know, our own experiences,
Speaker 1: in our own understanding, right, and sometimes we're wrong because
Speaker 1: humans often are and so it's possible that a secondary source,
Speaker 1: even though they're trying to report on a primary source accurately,
Speaker 1: it could be inaccurate. You just in the sense of
Speaker 1: trying to summarize a report, you could end up being inaccurate. Yes,
Speaker 1: And this happens all the time without bias. Now it
Speaker 1: can happen with bias too, but it it happens innocently
Speaker 1: all the time because it is really hard sometimes to
Speaker 1: summarize what a specific, uh scientific study is all about
Speaker 1: in a thousand words in a way that's understandable to
Speaker 1: your audience. So it's very important to try and go
Speaker 1: back to primary sources so that you can see what
Speaker 1: was actually said about the study. And here's something else
Speaker 1: I think it now would be a good time to
Speaker 1: bring it up, because we're running out of time. Um,
Speaker 1: And that is, don't copy and paste stuff that you
Speaker 1: read on the internet or anywhere else for that matter.
Speaker 1: Plagiarism is bad. Plagiarism is bad. That's called plagiarism, as
Speaker 1: you may have guessed. And uh, that's the thing. If
Speaker 1: you find some useful information in a journal, say a
Speaker 1: peer of your journal science, um, you want to use
Speaker 1: that in your your report well, that's great, you can,
Speaker 1: but you need to give credit where credit is due.
Speaker 1: Copying somebody else's words verbatim, even a couple of them,
Speaker 1: that's plagiarism. And you can even plagiarize yourself if you
Speaker 1: have written a paper and you go, oh, man, I
Speaker 1: did this paper last year and I totally this paragraph
Speaker 1: would be perfect for this new paper. Now, that's plagiarizing yourself.
Speaker 1: It has to be original. You can use it, but
Speaker 1: give credit to the person who who wrote it. And
Speaker 1: that's what the value the primary source to write. And
Speaker 1: the flip side of that coin is that, uh, you can't.
Speaker 1: In most academic papers, you can't necessarily you can't just
Speaker 1: say that this is common understanding. Like any particular piece
Speaker 1: of information, UM, you have to be able to back
Speaker 1: up that information by providing a source that that that
Speaker 1: gives you the foundation to make that statement. This doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you can't draw your own conclusion is from
Speaker 1: that information, but you can't just take something for granted
Speaker 1: and say, uh, this is true. You know, you have
Speaker 1: to be able to back that up. This is why
Speaker 1: if you go to a site like Wikipedia, UM, you'll
Speaker 1: see often in these articles you'll see something like citation needed.
Speaker 1: It's because it Wikipedia is very focused on trying to
Speaker 1: present the best information possible. But that's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a work in progress and it always will be
Speaker 1: just based upon the nature of that tool, and citation
Speaker 1: needed just means that there needs to be a foundation
Speaker 1: to support the statement that was made in that article.
Speaker 1: And without a foundation, you can't really make that statement
Speaker 1: because it could not it might not be true, you say,
Speaker 1: silent greenest people, but we need proof. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it varies from person to person anyway. So uh, and
Speaker 1: we did say this in another podcast about Wikipedia and
Speaker 1: using Wikipedia as a worse and why a lot of
Speaker 1: teachers frown on that, And again, part of that is
Speaker 1: because it's all secondary. Wikipedia by its nature says it
Speaker 1: cannot be used as a primary source. So if you
Speaker 1: conduct a scientific study, you can't use Wikipedia to publish
Speaker 1: your findings. Um, that's not what it's for. So Wikipedia
Speaker 1: is not necessarily a bad tool. It can definitely give
Speaker 1: you an understanding of a subject. But the best thing
Speaker 1: you can do is, once you get that understanding, dive
Speaker 1: down and find those primary sources. Because Wikipedia is really
Speaker 1: just it's just a tool to get you started. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean a lot of people thought we were
Speaker 1: are picking on Wikipedia, but it's the idea behind it
Speaker 1: is great, you know, being able to to contribute to
Speaker 1: scholarly research and and and getting an idea for what's
Speaker 1: going on with a particular topic. But the fact of
Speaker 1: the matter is, you know, things change over time. People
Speaker 1: can go in and mess with it just because they
Speaker 1: want to. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people have done serious work on
Speaker 1: trying to improve Wikipedia and make it more of a
Speaker 1: primary type resource. But in the end, you really need
Speaker 1: to go back and look at the sources to see
Speaker 1: where they got the information from, and you'll get an
Speaker 1: idea of how accurate you can really be with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just remember that, I mean, we talked a lot about
Speaker 1: this in terms of scientific studies because that's a pretty
Speaker 1: simple um example. But just remember that there are such
Speaker 1: things as bad studies out there too. People get people
Speaker 1: have their studies retracted. I've heard several on the you know,
Speaker 1: there have been a few high profile, very famous one
Speaker 1: recently that I was very very happy about getting retracted
Speaker 1: out of the British School of our British Journal of Medicine. Yes,
Speaker 1: so that was a peer of you journal, and somebody
Speaker 1: might have written a paper based on that because it is,
Speaker 1: you know, a peer. By the way, peer of you
Speaker 1: means that other doctors in this case had looked at
Speaker 1: the research and said, okay, well this article seems sound.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was. Well, experts have looked at it. Hey,
Speaker 1: it should be right right, right, and then occasionally they say, whoops, no,
Speaker 1: we were wrong, and this happened. That's what happened in
Speaker 1: this case. And that can happen in any kind of
Speaker 1: scientific journals, just medical. Um. So critical thinking is necessary
Speaker 1: to do accurate research on the internet. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like it's a lot of else. It sounds like
Speaker 1: it's a lot of work. But the nice thing about
Speaker 1: this is even though every individual paper that I ever
Speaker 1: had to write, I felt like, oh God, I can't
Speaker 1: believe I have to write another one of these. But
Speaker 1: ultimately it taught me to think and it taught me
Speaker 1: to really be critical when I was looking at information.
Speaker 1: And that's a skill you can use everywhere, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: it makes you look good if you can do this,
Speaker 1: and it's not just in your academic career. Guys and
Speaker 1: and ladies as well. I got chastise in real life
Speaker 1: for using the term guys in a non gender specific form.
Speaker 1: It happens. Yeah, But at any rate, this is a
Speaker 1: skill you can use everywhere, like even something as simple
Speaker 1: as taking your car and to get worked on that.
Speaker 1: Those critical thinking skills could be the difference between you
Speaker 1: getting you know, a a fifty dollar fix on something
Speaker 1: and a thousand dollar job that didn't need to be done. Um.
Speaker 1: You know it just it really does help you separate
Speaker 1: what is good information from what is bad. And really
Speaker 1: we use that all the time. And uh, so that
Speaker 1: was a really good discussion. I think I hope that
Speaker 1: Anne Marie liked that discussion about research. I hope that
Speaker 1: is useful to um. I believe that Marie is a teacher,
Speaker 1: so I hope that's useful to your students. And I
Speaker 1: hope that that pleases you and fellow teachers. Uh. The
Speaker 1: internet is a wonderful resource. It is also full of
Speaker 1: stuff that is not as wonderful. So just use that
Speaker 1: critical thinking, use these tips that we gave you, and uh,
Speaker 1: and and that that will put you on a good
Speaker 1: start to getting some really strong information. So hopefully that's
Speaker 1: a good help. If you have any suggestions for future topics,
Speaker 1: whether it's a ucation and technology or just technology in general,
Speaker 1: you can write us. Our email address is tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I
Speaker 1: will talk to you again really soon if you're a
Speaker 1: tech stuff and be sure to check us out on
Speaker 1: Twitter tech Stuff hs ws R handle, and you can
Speaker 1: also find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: tech stuff h s W. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, does how stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: and be sure to check out the new tech stuff
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