Kaizen
Chameleon Enthusiast
The demand to do your research is a fair one. The perennial situation of an impulse buy, and then an appeal to social media is an ongoing concern. However, I have read numerous posts where a new owner has been chastised for, not failing to do some research, but failing to do the right research. I wonder what options a new chameleon owner has here?
So where exactly is the layman supposed to research “correctly?” My guess is that some folks who make this demand on the average everyday owner, have no idea which of 1-5 they mean. A few, however, mean # 4. And, unsurprisingly, the sites they want you to look at are their own sites.
Now, don’t get me wrong, some of the sites I have in mind are chalk full of accurate and important information. However, good academic progress typically involves several well thought-out sources—often at odds with one another—that spur their respective research on by challenging the views therein. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case with these sites.
So, when an actual chameleon expert demands that someone do their research, what do they have in mind? Should their interlocutor enrol in a university program to gain academic access to peer reviewed articles, or spend the money for subscriptions to the same? Or perhaps they should take time off work/quit their jobs, find a financier and go to Africa to study chameleons, hands-on...assuming they know how to conduct proper scientific field studies? Or should they try their best to glean the kernel of truth they can from any open access articles they can find—only to have that shot down by the very expert that has told them to do better research? Or, just maybe, what these experts have in mind is to default automatically to their websites and research without question and without critical thought.
Look, there is a ton of good information on many of the sites I have in mind here, but the process that is proffered to arrive at these sites is just about as far from the kind of good academic dialectic that one can get. The hobbyist has very few reasonable avenues for independent research to hope for the kind of informed view that can withstand oppositional scrutiny.
Yes, folks should research to the best of their abilities. But it’s just not true that everyone has reasonable access to the same data that some experts demand everyone consult...Unless, of course, these experts mean, “consult my summary of the data you do not have access to.” So, for instance, when someone goes to the trouble of researching e.g. the weather conditions in, say, Madagascar, Yemen or Kenya—even if that information doesn’t accurately reflect the specific biotopes whence the relevant species come—it seems demeaning and pejorative to say, “stop spreading lies”, or “what you say is totally false”, or “by saying this you are responsible for the death of any chameleons whose owners read your post.”
Sure, the OP in this situation should have said something like, “I’m not actually sure of the best temps for your cham, but I did a quick search for the relevant areas, and found these numbers,” instead of saying, “your numbers look good when I compare them to the weather report for the area where your species is found.” But that doesn’t warrant a tirade about the intellectual honesty of the poster! Someone really interested in moving the community forward would respond to such statements by saying things such as, “it’s great you did some research here, but as it turns out the relevant species actually occupies specific microclimates within the larger areas you mentioned; and in my experience these are the actual conditions in said microclimates.”
We’re in decade 3 of online interaction, and digital diplomacy/tact is hardly a difficult concept—especially for folks who tout intellectual expertise. I’m really sick of intellectual bullying, and chameleon god-complexes! Furthermore, “language barriers” are no excuse. If one’s grasp of any particular language results in an inability to be civil, then it behooves the writer/speaker to ameliorate whatever impediments to civility his/her language skills engender. Sure, it is also incumbent on the listener/reader to grant a certain amount of leeway to the speaker/writer; but when it comes to intellectual bullying, there’s only so many times the self-proclaimed intellectual can hide behind a language barrier. Likewise, to appeal to the fact that tone, emphasis and intention are lost in written text is only an excuse for so long—the internet is not new, and people have been writing letters for over 2000 years, so figure it out.
Just be better, experts
- Go on social media and ask for information. But that is a no-go according to some experts, since the forums and Facebook are both replete with bad information and non-credible sources.
- Search the internet? Hit and miss. You might come across some rare open-access peer reviewed articles, but chances are you’ll find the same shallow and uninformed sources so often touted as fact on the social media sources above.
- Spend some serious $ for academic access to the few peer reviewed journal articles that focus on chameleons. (I know this to be true, since I spent hundreds of dollars for access to the research I read, and cited in my blogs. )
- Visit the sites that the experts on social media tell you to visit to hear “the truth” about chameleon husbandry.
- Quit your job, find a financier, and embark on your own chameleon research program. This will involve on-the-ground, hands-on research in Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, the Seychelles, Southern Europe, etc.
So where exactly is the layman supposed to research “correctly?” My guess is that some folks who make this demand on the average everyday owner, have no idea which of 1-5 they mean. A few, however, mean # 4. And, unsurprisingly, the sites they want you to look at are their own sites.
Now, don’t get me wrong, some of the sites I have in mind are chalk full of accurate and important information. However, good academic progress typically involves several well thought-out sources—often at odds with one another—that spur their respective research on by challenging the views therein. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case with these sites.
So, when an actual chameleon expert demands that someone do their research, what do they have in mind? Should their interlocutor enrol in a university program to gain academic access to peer reviewed articles, or spend the money for subscriptions to the same? Or perhaps they should take time off work/quit their jobs, find a financier and go to Africa to study chameleons, hands-on...assuming they know how to conduct proper scientific field studies? Or should they try their best to glean the kernel of truth they can from any open access articles they can find—only to have that shot down by the very expert that has told them to do better research? Or, just maybe, what these experts have in mind is to default automatically to their websites and research without question and without critical thought.
Look, there is a ton of good information on many of the sites I have in mind here, but the process that is proffered to arrive at these sites is just about as far from the kind of good academic dialectic that one can get. The hobbyist has very few reasonable avenues for independent research to hope for the kind of informed view that can withstand oppositional scrutiny.
Yes, folks should research to the best of their abilities. But it’s just not true that everyone has reasonable access to the same data that some experts demand everyone consult...Unless, of course, these experts mean, “consult my summary of the data you do not have access to.” So, for instance, when someone goes to the trouble of researching e.g. the weather conditions in, say, Madagascar, Yemen or Kenya—even if that information doesn’t accurately reflect the specific biotopes whence the relevant species come—it seems demeaning and pejorative to say, “stop spreading lies”, or “what you say is totally false”, or “by saying this you are responsible for the death of any chameleons whose owners read your post.”
Sure, the OP in this situation should have said something like, “I’m not actually sure of the best temps for your cham, but I did a quick search for the relevant areas, and found these numbers,” instead of saying, “your numbers look good when I compare them to the weather report for the area where your species is found.” But that doesn’t warrant a tirade about the intellectual honesty of the poster! Someone really interested in moving the community forward would respond to such statements by saying things such as, “it’s great you did some research here, but as it turns out the relevant species actually occupies specific microclimates within the larger areas you mentioned; and in my experience these are the actual conditions in said microclimates.”
We’re in decade 3 of online interaction, and digital diplomacy/tact is hardly a difficult concept—especially for folks who tout intellectual expertise. I’m really sick of intellectual bullying, and chameleon god-complexes! Furthermore, “language barriers” are no excuse. If one’s grasp of any particular language results in an inability to be civil, then it behooves the writer/speaker to ameliorate whatever impediments to civility his/her language skills engender. Sure, it is also incumbent on the listener/reader to grant a certain amount of leeway to the speaker/writer; but when it comes to intellectual bullying, there’s only so many times the self-proclaimed intellectual can hide behind a language barrier. Likewise, to appeal to the fact that tone, emphasis and intention are lost in written text is only an excuse for so long—the internet is not new, and people have been writing letters for over 2000 years, so figure it out.
Just be better, experts
