An Annoying Habit I've (Mostly) Stopped
When I was in elementary school and high school, I had a habit of reading something, not bothering to remember where I read it, and then introducing it into conversations with the phrase “I remember reading somewhere…” That must have been very annoying to anybody within earshot. I've mostly stopped it.
I was reminded of this by the propensity of Internet crackpots (such as trutherbot) to repeat unsourced claims about GMO foods, vaccines, chemtrails, etc. When I try using Google/Bing/Ask/Yahoo/whatever to find out where the claim came from, I mainly get links to people repeating the same unsourced claim. (I discussed a specific example of this bulshytt here.) I am not unique in noticing this phenomenon. Mitti Mithai also had some comments:
Never trust anyone who cites a “landmark study”, but can't be bothered to give you a reference.
In other words:
[CITATION NEEDED]
1 Comments:
I've got a friend who is worse than you ever were:
He'll read something, forget the source, FORGET THE THING, and still introduce it into conversation.
e.g.
Friend: "I was reading about tensors, which are really cool, and I've got the impression that they can be applied to lots of things."
TJIC: "What's a tensor?"
Friend: "I don't know."
TJIC: "Then why do you think they can be applied to lots of things?"
Friend: "I just get that impression."
TJIC: "Thank you for this excellent conversation; I've learned so much."
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