Looking back on my primary education, I dimly recall sparse, if any, explanation of copyright and the importance of citing and checking sources. I'm afraid that either my artistic hubris declined the possibility that I might produce work so "unoriginal," or truly nothing beyond the imperative, "Don't plagiarize or cheat," was mentioned.
My university papers were therefore a collection of carefully chosen direct and indirect quotes on which I elaborated like a child arranging macaroni art. I received good marks for my work - probably due to practiced writing style and somewhat relevant insights. I was imprisoned, however, by the simple structure of quote - transition - insight - transition - quote.
Following the academic model, I was even more discouraged to see that most of what I wanted to write had already been written, leaving me crunching over the keyboard for something original to say. I watched my classmates get away with quoting nothing but the textbooks, and maybe a few clicks off of Wikipedia. While Wikipedia is not an accepted academic source, it is still the online starting point of much academic and personal research, as opposed to music or medical.
I'm surprised that my disillusionment began before I started reading medical research studies. Most news articles infer conclusions associated with the research that they cite, but they rarely report the actual findings. Findings are boring. Sensational conclusions create revenue. Not to mention, finding a free .pdf of any study requires professional connections.
There's this guy Rands. He's really cool; I read a lot of his stuff. He tweeted this article from the Guardian, which inspired me, but I became so disappointed by the writing that I needed to begin my own discussion here. (Retweet became comment became new post... Screw registering and signing in with the Guardian!) The author (who sadly can't tell the difference between a contraction and a possessive pronoun) blows the whistle on sensational online news sources, reporting their effective misinterpretation of primary sources, followed by a refusal to cite-link. The demand to cite-link on a public, primary source seems kind of lazy, considering that most primary sources are a simple Google search away.
No source can be blindly trusted - even with links to its primary sources.
I just thought of one reason not to cite a source. I mean, how many clicks can a Neanderthal get from a critical review of an article that started as a great idea?
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