"Google is not a synonym for research."

I just ran across an interesting quote that at first intrigued me, and then pissed me off. The quote was taken from author Dan Brown’s 2010 novel, The Lost Symbol 

“Google is not a synonym for research.”

At first, I got a chuckle out of the “off-the-cuff” statement. As a man in his 40’s, I appreciate the basic sentiment of what Dan Brown is talking about. Far too often during encounters with my younger friends I discover they only think they know about an issue related to current events. More often than not the case is that they only actually possess just a cursory knowledge of the matter.

Photo courtesy of Amazon

I believe its a product of our younger generation's reliance on their handheld devices for the bulk of their information. Seriously Millennials, how much detail can you glean about the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa, for example, by only using twitter as your primary means of news? When I was in my 20’s most people subscribed to weekly periodicals such as Time, Newsweek or U.S. News & World Report and etc. At the bare minimum, everyone at least read a newspaper daily.

Then there were the evening news shows. Growing up, and even into my young adulthood, I made it a point to watch Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings go over world events each night. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but I was being suckled at the teat by some of the most experienced news journalists of that time.

The younger generation's concept of news

Flash forward to today. One of my best friends is 27-years old. He never reads a newspaper or magazine, seldom watches television news or listens to objective news radio. Almost all of his news consumption is done using the 2.31 x 4.5” screen of his iPhone. I have a running joke with him in which I tease him about the way he gets his news: “if an event is not reported in less than 140 characters it might as well have never happened.” In fact, a recent study says 2/3 of Americans aged 14-30 get their news from social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. We're talking about 68% of that demographic!!!

"I just finished reading a tweet about Ebola. Good, now I can skip the News-Hour on PBS...so boring."
Photo Courtesy of Zimbio

This problem came to a head recently when I got into an argument with that same friend surrounding the West African Ebola outbreak. He made a statement in which he unwittingly repeated a GOP political talking point, erroneously believing it to be the truth. I’m paraphrasing of course, but he said something to the effect of, “it’s just a matter of time before Ebola gets to America… Hell, there’s a doctor in Guatemala that has it already.”

I immediately challenged my friend on where he gathered that information because I knew it to be erroneous. In fact, the statement actually has its link to a Georgia Representative Phil Gingrey, who was on a conservative talk show trying to stoke fear of young unaccompanied minors entering the 

U. S. illegally. Here is an excerpt from what Rep. Gingrey (R) actually said:

"It's been said that the United States has found over 70 people from Ebola-stricken African countries entering our country from the southern border since January of this year,"

"We gotta stop them illegal children from bringing ebola into our country!"
Photo courtesy of Rawstory

When pressed about where he got that information, Gingrey’s handlers pointed reporters in the direction of the conservative news site Breitbart, a favorite among conservative millennials who favor its cell phone app because of its pithy, bite-sized summaries of topical news items.

That’s the problem in a nutshell that Dan Brown is talking about when he says that Google is not synonymous with research.

But is Dan Brown only partially correct in his assessment?

Could anyone without a secret security clearance have actually researched America's clandestine spying on its own citizens before Snowden's leaks became public?

Consider the recent revelation of widespread unauthorized National Security Agency wiretapping of Americans by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Dan Brown is legendary for his work on his bestseller, The Da Vinci Code. It has been reported that Brown spent hours of exhaustive research at the Vatican archives and other facilities researching primary sources for his book. Brown would argue that the amount of depth and detail which characterizes his work would be impossible if he had limited his research to only Google searches.

But what are we to make of that argument when we compare it to the thousands of documents leaked by Edward Snowden? Because of their sensitive nature, it would be impossible for a novelist to have access to the information Snowden leaked which is now widely available and accessible via Google search. In fact, an argument could be made that a Google search of what information the NSA gathered from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone would be superior to a request to the NSA using a Freedom of Information Act request. So yes, in that case Google is synonymous with research.

That brings me to my next point in this debate and why Dan Brown’s statement made me so angry. Many people have already forgotten about the tragic story of Aaron Swartz.   
I don't want to get too preachy about what Aaron Swartz was all about, I will leave that to you to figure out on your own. What I will say, however, is that Aaron Swartz represented the Millennial’s best chance of making Dan Brown and his “deep dive” type of archive research obsolete.

"Look at me, I'm researching"
Photo courtesy of The return of the modern philosopher

For those who are unaware, Aaron Swartz hung himself after he was arrested and about to be tried for breaking into a computer server located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Swartz was allegedly downloading academic journal articles from JSTOR. JSTOR is essentially a network of digitized academic journals and other highbrow research documents which are stockpiled behind a pay wall. So, to make a long story short, what Swartz was trying to do was to circumvent the JSTOR paywall being enforced by MIT. He attempted to do that by downloading the documents from the MIT server where the government-funded research was being parked, and then re-uploaded them on another server bank located elsewhere so that anyone using the internet could access the files for free.

Intellectual elites cling to knowledge and share it grudgingly with the American public despite receiving taxpayer funding for their pet projects.

Aaron Swartz
This man died for our collective internet sins
Photo courtesy of Flicker via Wikipedia Creative Commons

The reason why Dan Brown’s comment, “Google is not synonymous with research”, is still valid is precisely because most of the important statistical records and data are still currently being stored behind a pay wall or some other limited access point. In essence, Aaron Swartz was about to level the intellectual playing field between those elite few who possess the knowledge and only mete it out to the general public for a fee after it has become obsolete, and the unwashed masses who could stand to benefit from that knowledge in a timely fashion. A true democracy of knowledge.


It reminds me of advice once given by the legendary pimp Filmore Slim. Slim is widely regarded as one of the most studied pimps of all time and is rumored to be the inspiration for Snoop Dogg's persona. Slim was notorious for charging up and coming would be pimps for "consultation fees" regarding the pimp game. Slim's rationale is that if he could control the knowledge on his competitive San Francisco, California turf he could limit his competition in the streets. 

The good news is that Aaron Swartz death was not in vain. The U.S. Congress is now investigating a bill that would mandate the accelerated release of taxpayer-funded research to the public. The proposed bill is called the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR). The overall concept of FASTR is that research that has been funded by taxpayer money should not be restricted from taxpayers by a pay wall.

"The Game is to be sold...not to be told!"
Photo courtesy of  Flixist

Perhaps the biggest offenders are the private universities which recieve federal funding to conduct experiments in the form of  research grants. Those same institutions then take their research, publish it in a university journal, and then lock it away in JSTOR where only other universities or academics who pay JSTOR fees can access it.

FASTR will break down several paywall barriers and go a long way toward crowdsourcing academically collaborative projects around the globe.

In conclusion, hopefully one day intellectually sound, peer-reviewed and scientifically relevant information will be ubiquitous and free. Hopefully, the light of truth will eventually reveal all that is still shadowed by ignorance and deception. One day truth on the internet will become so commonplace that it will disprove Dan Brown's statement. We will know for certain that day has truly arrived when  a simple Google search offers the same benefit of traditional research. 

Russell’s Teapot, the God Debate, and Cunningham’s Law

Back on Feb. 4, 2014 I got into a heated conversation with one of my friends (let’s call him Phil for the purposes of this story) about the absurdity of the Bill Nye “the science guy” vs. Ken Ham religious debate. In case you didn’t watch it, what transpired was the classic argument about whether science and the study of evolution through natural selection is superior to the belief that all life on Earth is a result of a divine entity (in this case protestant Christianity).

Side note: Bill Nye is a former aerospace engineer and one of America’s leading champions of the teaching of science in its public schools. Ken Ham is the curator of a Christian themed museum which, inter alia, attempts to show through physical evidence and the dispute of accepted scientific methods that the Earth was created in the manner described in the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible (more specifically, the book of Genesis).

What transpired was a nearly 3 hour debate involving one of the world’s oldest questions: “How did we get here?” As a person who considers himself intellectually flexible I attempted to set aside my personal biases and beliefs to consider both arguments equally with as much neutrality as possible. Both sides acquitted themselves fairly well using the now very predictable Power-Point slide show and lecture combo which has become de rigueur at such modern venues. Point and then counterpoint, followed each other like a well-choreographed dance. Argument and then rebuttal. It was really standard stuff for any debate. In fact, it wasn’t until the contest was half-way finished before I had an incredible insight which I later shared with my friend. I told Phil that the debate really wasn’t about which origin story is more valid, but in fact was really about a deeper and more insidious argument. The real story, which I believe was getting lost in the weeds, was about who bears the onus of proving an origin story? The person stating it? Or the person attempting to call BS?

Here is where my friend and I disagreed about who actually won the argument. According to Phil, Ken Ham had “beat the socks off” Bill Nye because Nye failed to produce a single physical specimen or other similar example of “the missing link” between human beings and other primates. I said, “what about the Tiktaalik (first example of a “walking fish”) that Bill Nye demonstrated in his Power-Point slide as proof of evolution through natural selection?” My buddy Phil wasn’t buying it. He said that the connection between the Tiktaalik and modern man was too distant, and therefore evolution and, by extension, natural selection fails. So then I said, “what about when Bill Nye brought up the fact that we share almost 98% of our genes with chimpanzees? As far as Phil was concerned, if it were true that humans and chimps share much of the same genetic code then somewhere on the planet there would exist a chimp capable of speech. In other words, Bill Nye’s arguments fell flat on their noses and the moderator should have rung a bell and rushed to lift Ken Ham’s arm into to air as if he had just won a 15 round heavyweight boxing match simply because Bill Nye failed to produce a talking chimp.

That’s when I told my buddy about Russell’s Teapot and although it did not forever change his opinion about the origin of the world, I think Phil gained a new found respect for my ability to analyze current events.

This post is already much too long so I won’t bore you with details that you can learn on your own by clicking on the hyperlink. (It’s basically a theory posited by one of the best logicians of the modern era in which he is calling BS on religion. Russell compares modern religions as behaving like people who make a claim that a porcelain dish is floating somewhere in space, yet invisible to even our most sensitive telescopes. Furthermore, the fact that nobody can prove that the teapot does not actually exist is therefore proof, in of itself, that the teapot does exist. Confused? Here’s Russell’s Teapot (“RT”) put even more succinctly:

“The burden of proof is on the claimant, not the disclaimer.”

Bertrand Russell  at 44 yrs. (1872-1970)

That is when it dawned on me that this debate was doomed from the beginning because both sides were working towards different goals while using different sets of tools. For example, Ken Ham’s debate technique could best be described as a variant of a phenomena that I wrote about last week called “Cunningham’s Law” (“CL”). Here is that theory in short:

“If you want to know the answer to something on the internet, then you don’t ask the question, you post the wrong answer.”

Ken Ham had essentially rigged the debate by saying, “Prove my improvable assertions wrong using evidence which cannot exist.” So in a sense Bill Nye entered this debate operating under the perception that Ham had somehow “posted the wrong answer onto the internet” and therefore it was Nye’s duty to attempt to “fix Ham’s code” by giving him the right answers.

Whereas, Ken Ham was operating under the principles of Russell’s Teapot. From his perspective, whatever evidence produced by Bill Nye, and the community of scientists that he represented, could never sufficiently convince him that a Christian God did not create the Earth in less than 6,000 years. Primarily because Ham knew going in, that “even the most sensitive telescope Nye could produce would invariably still be unable to detect the teapot that he had claimed was floating out in space”.

(please comment, repost and donate a dollar or two if you like this, thank you for your support!)

Cunningham's Law and the Williams Corallary (+playlist)

Cunningham’s Law and the Williams Corollary

                 Ward Cunningham, Wikipedia Pioneer
(Photo by Carigg Photography and courtesy of:Wikipedia Creative Commons.)

                  Cunningham’s Law: “The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer." As quoted by Cunningham's friend and former Intel Corp. executive Steven McGeady

 Williams’ corollary to Cunningham’s law: "It's not enough that the question posited be incorrect; said question must also be so egregiously erroneous as to compel even the laziest of smug, know-it-all bastards to get off their judgmental haunches and chime in with the correction.” Taken from a comment posted on Reddit, March 8, 2014

Joel Z. Williams
Creator of the "Williams Corollary" to the Cunningham Law

In a discussion held on the popular news and information site Reddit, Joel Z. Williams responded to a comment left by "rockychunk" who stated that Cunningham's Law was fairly good but that it did not apply in situations where it was unclear as to whether the answer put forth was accurate or true. Joel Z. Williams agreed with "rockychunk" and expanded this concept to say that any answer put forth must deviate substantially from any plausibly correct answer in order to compel persons to intervene.

For example: Joel Z. Williams published an article a year prior to his discussion with "rockychunk" wherein he posted a formula he named the "Williams Peak". Although not a scientist, Joel Z. Williams created the formula using plausible variables such as the numbers of insecticide resistant bedbug cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control, the numbers of licensed Pest Control Operators in the U.S. and etc. Yet despite the article receiving heavy viewership for over a year, no scientist or other expert questioned his formula or otherwise called him to account. Joel Z. Williams attributed this phenomena to the fact that his formula contained all of the normal hallmarks of scientific legitimacy. Indeed, his correct use of letters to denote time, distance, costs, and etc., in his formula discouraged critical analysis from people unfamiliar with such fields of study.

 Joel Z. Williams pointed to the tactics employed by Nigerian con-artists working what has come to be known as an Advanced-Fee Fraud, or "419 Nigerian Prince Scam". These con artist purposely send out thousands of emails to potential victims which are peppered with misspelled words and poor grammar in an effort to weed out the more critically thinking victims. This process saves the Nigerian Prince scammers time because of a process called "self-selecting".  Victims who overlook the glaring "red flags" and do respond are usually more feeble-minded and therefore more pliable to their schemes. 

In other words, the majority of people would  immediately notice if a correspondence sent to them did not bear the hallmarks of legitimacy. Readily apparent  indicia of fraud such as bank notes bearing the logos of unfamiliar institutions, hand-written text on a supposedly legal document and etcetera. Smarter people would instantly say: "See? that's a scam, there's no longer any need to read further or otherwise concern myself with the intricacies of that person's sad story." whereas the more gullible person might ignore those obvious signs and say: "OMG that person is in extreme peril and I must act now to save them.".

In summary, if Joel Z. Williams wants to get the right answer on the internet regarding his formula for the Williams Peak, then he needs to rewrite the equation using obviously unscientific terms and other wildly inaccurate and unsubstantiated claims. That should sufficiently upset someone in the scientific community to the point that they would feel compelled to right a wrong and correct such an obvious and unforgivable error. (Note: The Williams Peak article is posted on this site in an article called "The Missouri Method").  

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