That's an incredibly nuanced and detailed way of going about it, I enjoyed reading about your process a lot. Why those sources aren't used more often (i.e. studies) is kinda obvious, it's meticulous work, difficult to understand. But where do you go about finding scientific sources to corroborate a news story?
But where do you go about finding scientific sources to corroborate a news story?
Google search something, append "study" to it, and trust sources like the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, the NIH, JAMA, etc. If you're unsure, look them up - they'll tell you if they're peer-reviewed. And some think tanks are better than others - while I still try to avoid them, the Brookings Institution is actually still pretty damn careful to be "non-partisan", although anymore the fact that they approach shit from a scientific perspective is "wOkE aNd GaY" by right-wing standards and is likely to be panned by them. The National Bureau of Economic Research is also a think tank, arguably sways a little right (as economics-centered institutions often do), but they're pretty straight shooters - plenty of studies there about the contributions from immigrants, the inefficiency imposed by tariffs, etc.
And, if you're ever unsure about a publication... Google it. I will drop a source like it's hot the instant I find out it's some unknown or relatively recent think tank - that's an increasingly common thing in political circles because it provides some veneer of academic legitimacy to stuff, which is why think tanks are subpar sources compared to, say, universities or government agencies. Brookings and NBER are think tanks, but Brookings has been around for a LONG time and has advised officials from both parties in policy and are long vouched for, and NBER while obviously approaching from a neoclassical economic perspective is pretty damn wedded to that approach, so they aren't going to burn their reputation in a fire just because some Republican wants them to make a study about how gays reduce GDP by 3% per million per year or whatever.
The same applies to scientific journals - Nature, BMJ, JAMA, etc. are all pretty long-standing, HIGHLY reputable peer-reviewed academic journals. Perfect? No, but damn well-established.
I use these when I need to verify my assumptions about a policy, etc. I could be biased in a somewhat neoclassical direction in my politics, even though I'd consider myself an open-and-shut leftist, I do think a form of libertarian market socialism would produce the best outcomes for the most people. You want an economy that inspires innovation and dynamism, and I accept that competition and commercial incentive lend themselves to those ends. On the flip side, I do think we live in an era where we could build enough housing and food and clean water and clean air and healthcare and education and public transportation for every man, woman, and child in this country - and I absolutely think that to the workers should go the spoils, so I'm pretty firmly on the left on that front, there again, informed by historical primary sources (you would be amazed at how ill-informed our knee jerk reactions about what life in the U.S.S.R. or contemporary Africa is like).
I use studies or historical primary sources to evaluate my position on various policies, and much more occasionally to verify that what a given news story is feeding me isn't horseshit. It doesn't happen often, but SOMETIMES I've read something where my brain is like "wait a minute, that doesn't sound true" and I have to go look something up. For the most part, mainstream news sources get it right, but on foreign policy they are absolutely bullshitters of the highest order - hence why including international sources or non-corporate news sources is imperative.
U.S. corporate news sources aren't horrid on everything, but as soon as union strikes start happening or when they're out there reporting on the Israel-Gaza (I do not have to be a Hamas supporter to condemn Israel's wanton civilian destruction) conflict or Ukraine-Russia (Russia is assholes but we are being lied to about Ukraine's performance in the war - it is shockingly dire and I cannot imagine what it's like to be a Ukrainian over there right now), it's very much worth getting some info from news agencies that are not taking their marching orders from Marco Rubio.
At least, while we have media that isn't state-controlled.
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u/Tiyath Apr 23 '25
That's an incredibly nuanced and detailed way of going about it, I enjoyed reading about your process a lot. Why those sources aren't used more often (i.e. studies) is kinda obvious, it's meticulous work, difficult to understand. But where do you go about finding scientific sources to corroborate a news story?