I think it's funny because me and my uncle are on like opposite ends of the political spectrum. We meet in the middle sometimes about stuff like how local news is propaganda, the American food industry is driving all sorts of changes to laws in the past about food safety thru lobbying. But then we'll disagree on some things too like the 'benefits' of an armed police force, how 'socialism' could be a possible solution to problems like crime and poverty. Anyway, yeah, I'm just too lazy to actually look into it. Show me some stuff about COVID, studies published in 2023 preferably. Thanks so much in advance.
Say that you did and found out it was created in Fort Dietrich and spread at airports by the CIA. Do not elaborate.
Do elaborate, but only by talking about the 2019 World Military Games.
No no, they've got everything in there, every kind of bacteria and virus! But it's for protecting our freedoms, grandpa! Covid was trying to defend us!
Do you own research usually means the person wants you to stumble around the Internet and find the same dumb shit they did and come to the same insane conclusion.
Looking for real counter evidence and studies is a waste of your time.
Yes, I realized this myself to some point because he believes 'the mainstream scientific community couldn't really be trusted since the 1980s'
They never were. In the Neoliberal golden age, the libs could feel smugly about pretending to have reached an enlightened society, but that was simply never the case.
Not to be a downer, but if you did get some number of academic studies that showed clear evidence of this or that, what are the odds that your uncle won't just send you a link to a comment in a Facebook group that says the opposite and then go "well, I guess we'll never know for sure"?
My thoughts exactly, you have to pick your own battles with stuff like this and if someone is pulling the "do your own research" line, chances are they're already too far gone for you to change their mind. If it's someone who actually matters in your life, you can decide if it's worth cutting them out (if you do, you should let them know why) or just "wow, that's crazy"-ing them until they change the subject.
If you threaten to cut contact with them and they actually care about you, it may be the one thing that works. Don't try to debate them if you want to keep them around because it will build resentment. Even "we're not talking about this, bye" and leaving will have a bigger impact. I have a biochemistry degree and I wouldn't even try to convert antivaxxers.
I'm pretty sure people who say "do your own research" regard academic papers as less valuable than weird Facebook memes
I've never had someone to tell me to do my own research to my face but I have the inescapable urge to throat punch people that do it online. "Go out there and prove I'm right." Someone posted an article a few days ago about how Covid can cause your brain cells to fucking fuse together.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg2248
As others have said, it would be helpful if you told us what your uncle was saying that you're trying to push back on or challenge. Here are a couple of links I happened to have saved to articles regarding studies on Covid cognitive decline and relationship to dementia. Not sure if they're the kind of thing you're looking for.
New study shows SARS-CoV-2 infection accelerates the progression of dementia
The reason I saved them was to send to someone who wouldn't believe me that Covid infections could cause cognitive issues down the road, but I'm pretty sure I first came across them in posts here.
Do your own research
"My Facebook feed told me that the vaccines are a Jewish plot to turn you transgender."
Do your own research means looks at facebook memes. If you're too lazy to look for a study, you're definitely too lazy to read it too.
Scientific studies are not designed for the layman really, they're designed to be read by other scientists. It will take a lot of effort for you to read and fully comprehend a study as a non-scientist. It's a skill that you build up over many years. Even scientists in different fields will have trouble reading outside of their field.
Also what about covid? Looking on google scholar, there are ~67,000 studies about COVID published so far in 2023. There are 5.7 million total.
If you would like to know something specific about COVID, I can definitely help. If you have no specific goals in your research, then you should probably just read the Wikipedia page for COVID.
Covid was created in a lab to kill old and poor people to save the government money on Medicare and social security.
Alex Jones said the government would create a plague to kill of a bunch of people.
Look up the keyword "covid" along with the keyword "endothelial". There was a body of research finished in 2022 that concluded that the mechanism of COVID-19 symptoms was the weakening of internal "boundary" tissues, which is why you can not feel pain but still have all kinds of impairment.
That said, you are not in a "logic, facts, and reason" scenario. Trying to openly argue against someone will strengthen their factional instincts and they will double down. There is a scripted "liberal vs. conservative" play that has been engineered on Facebook 50 billion times. No need to hash that out again and get nowhere.
You have to do what Fauci and the CDC failed most miserably at: instead of trying to dispel the crazy, you have to harness it. Come up with claims that are more bold and outlandish and confident than what he has, and point the conclusions in a different direction. He's probably ready with the "that's what the MSM have gotten you to believe" line. Leapfrog him and use that line against him.
I have a reactionary uncle who is vaguely aware that I'm some sort of lefty, but he really takes a liking to me because he thinks I'm crazy.
More resources (@Zuki and anyone else)
The Alt-Right Playbook. A run-through of the media and public discourse strategies that reactionaries use, consciously or unconsciously.
The Filter Bubble. Basically "how capitalism ruins the internet, The Book". A deep dive into the landscape of online media, and how personalized experiences and content eroded the points of reference we have with each other, and the ecosystems of social direction that emerge when the profit motive meets the psychology of tribalism and of perceived threat.
You wouldn’t really be doing your own research in that case though…
