How Internet actually hinders our research

We've all seen this picture before.

Black bear chasing photographers.

Sure, we've all laughed at the fat guy or at the one stumbling. We've all came up with the joke "You don't need to run faster than the bear, you just need to run faster than your friends." But did you ever stop and wonder if the picture was fake?

You probably did, seeing that there is no source cited. In fact, if you type in Google "bear chases photographers", you'll get a dozen of the same picture posted on tumblr, lol.com, and other LOL sites. Each one has a different joke and a smiley face. But who actually cared to track down the original source? (if there is an original source, to begin with?)

I tried. All I came up with was a couple of Google+ profiles of photographers posting this picture and asking their friends, "is this real or not?" Unfortunately, people were too busy laughing to answer. It is a really funny picture. 

All this does is highlight the real problem here: in the land of Internet, you have no idea what is true and what isn't, because anyone can write anything (like me, writing about virtually anything in my blog). Internet is easy to use, but also a whole lot more harder, because you have to double-check each resource. Whereas when you research books, the whole thing was edited, revised, and double-revised before publication, saving you the trouble of having to verify information.

And the worst of the Internet is that it's very easy to copy something and make it yours (in fact, only two seconds with CTRL-C/CTRL-V). And this is catastrophic when it comes to writing academic papers. It's all too easy to use Internet as the know-it-all resource, and end up abandoning trusty old books in the process. It's very easy to slap together sentences from different sources, top it with a title, and hand it in as "your paper".

It makes me sad. I've had to pluck up my courage a lot of times to tell the itchy truth to even my closest friends. You can't, can never, ever, copy/paste and then hand it in as your words. 

But it occurred to me that maybe some people didn't get the same anti-plagiarism classes that I had in 5th grade. So here goes a shortened version of it. Avoid these traps, and you'll be fine. 

#1. The Basic Plagiarism

The golden rule of plagiarism is THREE WORDS. Copy more than three words from a source, and it's considered plagiarism.

Now, if the words happen to be "United Nations Security Council", that's okay, because it's a name that you can't change. But if the words are something like:
 " the Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security" (the United Nations Security Council, at http://www.un.org/en/sc/)

 That's not okay. If you want to use the exact sentence, you need to cite the source, like I just did. If you want to use the concept, then go ahead and change the sentence into something like:

 "The Security Council are the ones responsible for preserving peace in the world."

See what I did there? No three words are the same.

So, to sum it up: If you copy/paste more than three words from a source, it's plagiarism.

#2. The "Pro"

The plagiarism "Pro" goes a little further in its quest to copy and paste the world. The "pro" takes words from different sources and puts it together in one sentence. 

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (Wikipedia) and has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.

Two copy/pastes in one sentence! The professor is never going to catch that!

Actually, the teacher will. Besides using software like "Plagiarism checker", usually it's so obvious that all you have to do is type some words in Google and the phrase will come up.

Don't do this. It's lazy. Read both articles and sum it up your own way (though I don't recommend Wikipedia).

#3. The ultra, plagiarism champion

Original source: The Security Council takes the lead in determining the existence of a threat to the peace or act of aggression. It calls upon the parties to a dispute to settle it by peaceful means and recommends methods of adjustment or terms of settlement. In some cases, the Security Council can resort to imposing sanctions or even authorize the use of force to maintain or restore international peace and security.

Your words: The Security Council is at the top in realizing the existence of a menace to the peace or a terrorist attack. It asks the different parties at dispute to resolve it by peaceful ways and suggests methods of adjustment or terms for a deal. In many cases, the Security Council can turn to sanctions or even permitting force to establish or restore peace and security in the world.

Haha, very clever. All you did was take the exact same paragraph, a dictionary for synonyms like thesaurus.com, and substitued virtually every word.

This is still plagirism. You didn't do any work, aside from substituing the words. Go back, read the article, and resume it WITHOUT peeping at the original source.

#4.  Self plagiarism

Yes, this is still an offense, though your past-self is less likely to get offended than if you copied from someone else. Here's how to commit self-plagiarism:

You take a paper that you turned in last year, copy/paste some sentences/paragraphs/the entire thing, or maybe you translate it into a different language. Then, you hand in a new paper with parts of it copy/paster from your previous work.

This is also a lazy way to avoid doing new work. Nice try. Even if they are your words, a new assignment means doing new work, and not borrowing from your other papers.

You may be inspired from your previous reports, but not copy and paste from them. Never.

So, to avoid falling into the Internet trap, I suggest that you do two things:

1) Use books. Learn to research other sources other than the Internet. Go ahead, venture into that dusty section of the library that hasn't been visited in years. Be different.

2) Forget that CTRL-C / CTRL-V exists. What? What are those letters you're talking about? I don't know, haven't used them in a while.

Be happy and be smart. Remember, copy/paste in writing only creates copy/paste personalities, and you don't want that, do you?


"The problem with the Internet is that you don't know if what's written is really true." Aristotle, -6000 BC

How to become a climate skeptic

Global anomalies galore! So you’ve seen the biggest typhoon ever wreak havoc in the Philippines. You’ve seen snow fall where it rarely, if ever, falls (Palhoça, Brazil). You’ve seen deadly forest fires that killed 19 firefighters in Arizona and others that devastated part of the Yosemite natural park, killing thousand-year-old sequoias, due to intense heat waves.  You’re scratching your head trying to imagine when and where the next catastrophe will hit.

Destruction in Tacloban, Philippines from the typhoon Haiyan. Photo taken by French journal La Libération.

All of the events mentioned above happened in 2013, folks.

But how on Earth can scientists still claim that this is perfectly normal and we’re not experiencing any major global changes caused by human activity?

Here’s my guide on how to become a climate skeptic in three easy steps. First, inform yourself on all the major changes the Earth goes through that can cause climate change. Second, learn how to deny and contradict arguments employed by scientists on the opposite team, basing your facts scientifically. Thirdly, ally yourself with important politics that will approve your claims and have economic interests in proving/disproving climate change.

So! Buckle up, this is a long one.

#1.  Inform yourself about all the other processes that can affect the climate

• Ice ages

First of all, the Earth didn’t always have this warm, sunny climate that we’re used to today. You’ve all heard of ice ages that periodically cover part of the Northern hemisphere in ice and the wooly mammoths that come with. Ice ages are just one of the Earth’ many cycles. They are part of Earth’s past and will happen in the future.

In fact, the period between ice ages is so short, it’s called interglacial period. It’s much shorter than the ice ages. While each ice age lasts about 100 to 150 thousand years, the interglacial periods last only 20 thousand years.

So what we’re living in today is nothing more than a brief interruption of the last ice age, known as Würm here in Europe or the Wisconsin glaciation across the Atlantic Ocean.  Rises and drops of temperature are normal during this period. In fact, a rise in temperature may mean that the Earth is bracing itself for another ice age, not that we’re releasing enormous amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Influences from outer space

• The sun

When we hear about the Earth warming up, we tend to look up- with good reason. The sun is Earth’s heat source and the greenhouse effect is what traps part of this heat and keeps the Earth toasty.  Any changes in the sun itself would impact Earth’s temperature directly. As it is, the sun does has its own cycles, one of which lasts around 11 years and is responsible for boosting the solar “constant”, or the radiation factor that makes the sun transmit more or less heat to Earth. Another longer cycle lasts from 80-200 years and gradually increases the constant maximum before bringing it back to normal.

The number of sunspots are related to an increase in the solar constant and solar radiation that the Earth receives. Source: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif

This isn’t a great argument to use in climate-skeptology, because the period involved in climate change is too short to be taken into account. Unless you're ingenious and you want to show that global warming nowadays is a result of the end of this sun cycle. Or maybe you’re part of the group that denies climate change completely and you want to use this argument to show that according to the number of sun spots recorded over the last decade, the solar radiation is actually going down, not up. The great thing about science is that you can pick your data according to your beliefs and back it up with your own arguments, right?

•  The Earth

Then there’s the Earth’s position in outer space.  Everyone is familiar with the Earth’s two main rotations; one around itself, creating day and night; and one around the sun that accounts for the change in seasons. But there are three other processes that change which parts of Earth are closer to the sun, commonly known as the Milankovitch cycles:

Precession, or the rotation of Earth’s axes, as demonstrated by this video:

A complete rotation takes about 23 thousand years to be completed.

Axial tilt or obliquity, which are responsible for the changes in seasons, but can also vary over a long period (41 thousand years), as demonstrated by this video: 

Eccentricity, or the change in Earth’s eliptic orbit, as demonstrated by this video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mlUXzHoJsk

This takes about 100 thousand years to be completed. All in all, these many cycles have a major impact on Earth’s climate in the long term.

• Volcanoes

Next on the anti-climate change menu is volcanic activity. Yes, volcanos have a major impact on the planet. When a strong eruption reaches 12 to 18 kilometers in altitude, it releases sulfur in the stratosphere. This will cause a layer of reflective material that make the sun rays bounce back from where it came from, and keep the Earth from warming with the greenhouse effect. Volcanic eruptions such as Krakatoa in 1883 create harsh winters.

In fact, releasing sulfur in the stratosphere is such a powerful combatant against the greenhouse effect that a couple scientists have considered launching missiles in the stratosphere to imitate what volcanoes do naturally.

• Ocean currents and wind

And last on my non-exhaustive list of arguments are the changes in ocean currents, known as El Niño and La Niña. El Niño is a transfer of heat from the Pacific Ocean towards South America, where there will be heavy rain fall. This will also cause droughts in Indonesia and Australia. La Niña is the opposite, caused by strong winds that push this heat away from South America. The warm water is blocked near Indonesia and cold underlying water is forced to move towards South America.

If you compile all this data, you will have a great selection of what to choose to prove those pesky scientists that it's ok to keep on polluting. Climate change is natural and not caused by human activity at all. 

And that, my friend, is how you make a climate skeptic.

Keep tuned for Part 2 on becoming a climate skeptic: how to deny global warming.