What does “Do Your Own Research” really mean?

Doing your own research sounds like a wonderful idea, but what does it actually mean?

For some it might indeed suggest that you go and consult all the available information written by the very best subject matter experts and then you distill that down into a really good understanding of what the best most reliable verified facts reveal … right?

Alas no, not at all, as commonly used it often means something very different.

The phrase is popular with conspiracy theorists, and is commonly deployed within that community. So where did this phrase “Do your own research” come from, and what does it really mean?

Wait back up a moment.

Am I seriously arguing that the pursuit of knowledge and truth is a bad thing?

Nope, not at all, the pursuit of knowledge should be greatly encouraged and nurtured. We need an electorate who are engaged and informed, we need people to be both technically and digitally literate.

In the context of medicine, it is also a good idea to really dig into and understand what is going on. Patients who find out about the available healthcare options generally have far better outcomes. It also makes a lot of sense to plug into patient advocacy groups and learn how to communicate effectively with your healthcare provider. Guidance on “How can I get my doctor to listen to me?” is a valuable insight to arm yourself with.

Encouraging all that and more is a very good thing.

The problem is that the phrase “Do your own research” is often deployed by people who want you to embrace opinion as fact and also reject verified fact as fiction. “Do your own research” is code within conspiratorial communities that means, “Here is a whacky belief, go look for stuff that confirms it, and ignore what the experts say“.

I tend to think of it this way: The pursuit of knowledge is like a bit of rope – when used well, you can climb out of the pit of ignorance, but if abused, you can end up hanging yourself with it by embracing ignorance and crackpottery instead of verified knowledge.

The dubious use of the phrase often arrives packaged something like this …

• You can’t trust the so-called experts anymore, you need to do your own research
• Do your own research and don’t trust the media
• etc…

Where does “Do Your Own Research” come from?

This has actually been researched by real researchers, So yes, they literally did their own research, real research into the phrase “Do your own research“.

In 2022, Nathan Ballantyne, Jared B. Celniker, and David Dunning wrote a paper on the topic titled “Do Your own Research“.

• Link: Do Your Own Research – Sorry, journal paywall there. (You can access it if you pay $384 for 30 days of access, or $53 for just 48 hours … FFS, that’s absurd!)
• Don’t panic, you can find a draft of the paper here.

Side note: Yes, that third author is indeed “the” Dunning, the same guy who gave us the insight into the Dunning-Kruger effect back in 1999.

What is in this paper?

Permit me to extract a few quotes for you from the beginning of the paper to answer that …

…That idea is DYOR [they use the Acronym DYOR for Do Your Own Research]. (If the reader has not heard of it, we recommend: Do Your Own Research.) The slogan is flexible and versatile, used frequently on social media platforms, in messages about topics from medical science to financial investing to conspiracy theories….

…What at first appears to be a simple internet meme turns out to be a fascinating phenomenon…

...Five questions guide our exploration of DYOR …

1. What does the DYOR slogan mean?

2. Where did the slogan come from?

3. Why is it so compelling to some people?

4. Can people do their own research competently?

5. How can we improve people’s research?

You can of course do your own research by actually reading the paper titled “Do Your Own Research“, and if curious for a deeper dive, then you should do that. It’s 16 pages long, so it is not too indigestible. However, I’ll also distill it down and paraphrase it for you.

What does it really mean?

It sounds like a command by the speaker … to seek truth? … except it is often deployed in a context where the experts have answered the question, and so it suggests that you should ignore the experts and seek your own answer, one that is not the accepted consensus.

Let me run that past you once again so that you can wrap your head around that. It is commonly used by people who have rejected a well-established fact based answer and want to promote some whacky claim as the real truth. Consider hearing it to be a bit of a red flag – you should be immediately skeptical and on your guard. As used by conspiracy theorists, it is a request to reject truth and embrace an “alternative fact”.

It is also often utilised as a defensive weapon. The speaker asserts a claim with no evidence, then when-challenged, drops the phrase as a means of shifting the burden of proof to the listener. The evidence for the claim is there, you the listener just have to find it. This is a strategy to dish out disinformation without backing it up with evidence – they make that your problem.

Don’t put up with that. If they make a claim, then it is their problem to prove it.

It can also be used to create an illusion that the speaker has knowledge that you the listener lack, and it is now apparently your problem to go find it.

To be clear, this is not really the pursuit of knowledge at all, it simply masquerades as that.

Where did this Phrase Come from?

The researches dug right down into this, not by doing their own research, but instead by recognising that others were better equipped to tackle this, so they tapped into subject matter experts, social scientists, for this insight.

They found that the earliest source of the slogan appeared to come from conspiracy theorist Milton William (“Bill”) Cooper.

Yes, this guy. (That’s a link to his wikipedia page). If you grew up reading UFO books (as I did), then you will immediately know this guy.

His paranoid anti-government belief revolved around a supposedly hidden scheme by the Illuminati, Freemasons, and other nefarious actors to institute a world government, enabling extraterrestrials to enslave human beings, and thereby trample on every citizen’s constitutional rights. According to Cooper, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 because he was about to blow the whistle to the American people about the UFO invasion. And what’s more, Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy: the real assassin was the chauffeur who shot Kennedy using a gas-pressure weapon created by the aliens themselves.

Before the internet this guy was peddling his kooky ideas via books, mail-order tapes, and radio broadcasts. The Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was a big fan.

“Do your own research” was Cooper’s thing. Basically believe nothing and instead seek out the “truth”.

Prior to Mr Cooper, conspiracy theorists often took the opposite stance. The paper draws a contrast between him and Immanuel Velikovsky, who very strongly discouraged people from doing their own research. (Yea, I read his stuff as well … sigh!). He saw himself as the enlightened one who had the skills to impart knowledge, and that others did not have sufficient skills. Cooper did the opposite. He encouraged his audience to reject expert opinion and think independently because that was how he had uncovered all the conspiracies he believed in.

At the time his beliefs not only gained traction amongst the conspiracy community, as it was then, but it also inspired much of the story arc within the X-Files TV series. (Yea, I was into Mulder and Scully as well).

Cooper died in 2001. The Wikipedia page on him lays out the details of what happened…

On November 5, 2001, Apache County sheriff’s deputies attempted to arrest Cooper at his Eagar, Arizona home on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and endangerment stemming from disputes with local residents. After an exchange of gunfire during which Cooper shot one of the deputies in the head, Cooper was fatally shot. 

In many respects, the concept of doing your own research does perhaps have interesting even older origins. The enlightenment nurtured the idea that accepted wisdom should be challenged …

The Royal Society of London used as their motto “Take nobody’s word for it” (Nullius in verba). Immanuel Kant summed up the spirit of enlightenment as “Dare to think for yourself!” (Sapere aude!).

It strikes me that the concept is fine, the problem is the execution. What the enlightenment thinkers meant by research, and what today’s conspiracy theorists mean, are very distinctly different things. If something has always been accepted, but there is no evidence for it being true, then rejecting it and seeking out a better evidence-based understanding is fine. However, if the concept is being used to reject the things that evidence has established and to instead promote things that have no evidence at all, then this radical individualism that dismisses evidence-based expertise is a road that leads to ignorance and not enlightenment.

Confused?

Let’s go briefly back to my bit of rope – its a tool. You can use it to climb with, or alternatively you can use it to hang yourself with. Guess which one the “Do your own research” proponents often end up doing.

Why is “Do Your Own Research” so compelling?

It creates wiggle room for the acceptance or rejection of ideas and authorities. With this idea in play, what happens is that truth becomes what you decide it is and not what “they” tell you. In other words, it panders to individualism, and that is very compelling to many.

We live in a deeply complicated, confusing, and very uncertain world. By “Doing Your Own research” individuals can grasp for an explanation, an understanding, then enables them to feel safer and in control, and that then gives them meaning along with deeper acceptance within a social group of like-minded individuals.

If advised that the road they are walking is crazy (for example you and I know that vaccines do work and masks do also work), but those that have “done their own research” have come to a different conclusion for very bad reasons.

It creates a safe haven for alternative facts to thrive within.

Why has the phrase itself become so popular for some?

• It is an attention grabbing slogan that sounds very reasonable
• It comes across as unique and exciting – an invitation to discover hidden secrets
• It is a useful tool to deploy when challenged to shift the burden of proof. In online exchanges it is often the last comment.
• It enables people to feel special (I know stuff you don’t, and so you need to educate yourself to get up to my standard)
• Trust in media, educators, and science is low and so it opens an alternative

… or as the authors of the paper articulated that last one …

When the broader world appears untrustworthy, one natural reaction is to circle the wagons and restrict trust to oneself and people perceived to be close, such as family, friends, and ideological compatriots.

Can people do their own research competently?

Now this is the heart of the matter.

In a world where everybody believes they are above average, most also believe they are good at doing research.

When are people right and when are they wrong about this?

If only the authors of this paper, which includes Mr Dunning, had been able to call upon an expert, for example somebody who understands the Dunning-Kruger effect … (oh wait).

It turns out that the answer is complicated.

Basically, when seeking knowledge, we have no escape from a dependance on others.

Often people will trust their own perceptions and because they don’t know they lack specific skills for a specific question they are not able to recognise systematic errors when they make them.

Permit me to turn to the paper once again to expand upon that …

Suppose you want to learn more about a topic, but you face a set of mixed evidence. Some of it supports one hypothesis, some supports another. How do you move forward? Competent research utilizes tools for acquiring a representative sample of the available evidence and discerning high-quality data from its less valuable counterpart. But people often fall short of that standard. Even when they do not have a preference for one hypothesis or outcome, they tend to sample information in a biased way

People will also often harvest “information” via platforms such as YouTube. The obvious problem there is that these platforms utilise algorithms that pander to their existing beliefs (previous searches and views), and so they embrace what is served up within this echo chamber as “truth”, then consider this as “research done” without appreciating that all they really did was digest a diet of whacky unhinged stuff that aligns with what they want to find. You can see the problem, but due to utter incompetence of those doing “research” like this, they don’t.

Often people who “Do their own Research” will also have a very specific bias, a set conclusion they are looking for, and so confirmation bias comes into play. They will seek out the information needed, and discard anything that does not yield the required outcome.

Another problem is that people struggle to identify reliable sources of information. For example when faced with somebody off the street telling a story about their experience or a scientist explains an evidence-based position, some will often place more trust in the story. That’s not a reliable source, and so leaning upon that will lead to insights that are just wrong.

Subjective experiences are not objective facts.

Those that lean upon subjective experiences for “facts” will often fail to grasp the huge mistake they are making. People can end up being completely fooled into thinking they have obtained an insight.

OK, that brings us to this next question.

How can we improve people’s research?

People will always be curious, and so under, or not under, the banner of “Doing your own Research“, people will seek out information. How can we improve things to enable them to have a better shot at getting it right?

Simply encouraging people to do more research in the hope they get it right is not really going to work all that well. Using more flawed data is just more of the same.

What really can work is education and training to upgrade skills. For example, the Stanford History Education Group has developed and tested programs that help students identify reliable online information sources.

While this is a good step, it is really not a solution for people who don’t recognise their distinct lack of skill.

So do the authors of the paper offer a solution?

Nope, but they do have a fascinating observation …

Scientists face difficulties gathering representative evidence and evaluating it judiciously. And just as we found with DYOR enthusiasts, more professional research is not always better: some evidence suggests that fields churning out too many publications may neglect novel insights and struggle to advance beyond customary ideas (Chu and Evans 2021). It may be counterintuitive, but we would argue that the differences between lay and expert research are differences of degree, not kind.

Once we recognize that expert inquiry always contends with these same issues, we may arrive at a more empathetic view of the all-too-human struggles of DYOR enthusiasts

Pulling it all together

The desire to encourage people to be informed is a vitally important endeavour.

I’ve already banged this drum, but it is important, so let me do it once again …

• Be politically engaged – who are the candidates you will be able to vote for, what are their policies, what is their history, what do they propose to actually do, and what is their track record for keeping past promises. I really do wish more were aware of things and did not vote along tribal Blue or Red lines with no real awareness of the consequences.
• Be socially engaged – in black history month go find out about some prominent historical people you might, up until now, have never known about.
• Be curious about everyday things – what’s the difference between AM and FM radio?
• Be technically engaged – There are perhaps tips and tricks to learn about your smartphone that could make you a lot more productive, why not be curious about that and go find out.
• etc…

… in other words the pursuit of knowledge is a really good thing, and so encouraging people to be curious and to go and find out stuff that they have not previously known brings greater social engagement and can make lives a lot better.

However, for the “Do your Own Research” crowd the endeavour is not about the pursuit of knowledge. As previously highlighted, they start with a conclusion and then look for stuff to confirm it, and so motivated reasoning and confirmation bias then comes into play.

Back to my bit of rope metaphor once again. Knowledge enables us to climb out of a pit of ignorance, but when the pursuit of knowledge is abused, then you end up with people embracing stuff that is just wrong.

Case in point: Over one million people tragically died in the nation due to COVID – 232,000 of them need not have died, but they did because they embraced the anti-vax / anti-mask belief. Many got there after they “did their own research”.

Learning and discovering new things is productive and positive, but if it is weaponised and abused by conspiracy theorists, then we reap a harvest of crackpot ideas that don’t have a jot of credible evidence. (Hint: No, the 2020 election was not stolen. Again, you know that, but many still believe it)

As has already been highlighted, the core problem is that people who promote “Do your own research” are not actually doing research themselves. Instead, we have a bat-signal for starting with a specific conclusion, and then proceeding to seek out information that confirms it. If your starting point is a rejection of fact-based science, then you are not doing any meaningful knowledge seeking at all.

We live in an age where ignorance and mythology are both embraced as a virtue, and evidence-based subject matter experts are dismissed as propagators of myths and often demonised for telling the truth (for example Dr Fauci). It is perhaps tempting to think that the over 232,000 people whose COVID deaths were preventable might have changed their minds in their last few hours and deeply regretted their decision to refuse the vaccine as they vainly gasped in agony to pull air into their failing lungs, but we may never know. We can’t ask because they are now dead.

Not only do actions have consequences, but so do false beliefs, even if they are held passionately and sincerely.

Bottom line: Be informed, but also beware of “Do your own Research” being promoted by people who don’t actually research anything.

Further Reading

• Link: Do Your Own Research – yes, journal paywall there. (you can find a free draft of the paper here)
• Wikipedia – Motivated Reasoning
• Wikipedia – Confirmation Bias