Lots of issues are coming our way—shoreline protection, waste-to-energy, Negros Island Region Act, West Philippine Sea, and so on. We have to make decisions, and to take sides.
However, we are compounded by a diversity of information, which is often conflicting.
The worst thing is that we are vulnerable to disinformation and misinformation when we know nothing beforehand. The former is a deliberate attempt to mislead; while the latter is exposure to inaccurate information.
We can resist being misled if we get the right facts from legitimate sources. Getting the right facts is research as applied in everyday life—it is not just an academic exercise for earning degrees.
Research or pagdukiduki o pag-usisa in Cebuano is part of life-long learning to survive in a complex world with diverse conflicting information. As Socrates said: “An unexamined life is not worth living.”
Life-long learning is the pursuit of more knowledge and skills throughout life. It could be in personal or professional contexts through formal or informal means that are continuous and self-motivated.
It is both a process and a result of learning something new, unlearning the old, and relearning what has been taken for granted but with practical value later.
This is true in the data we generate as researchers, and our experience from doing so apply to real-life situations.
In a formal context, learning by discovery, invention, or innovation through applying research principles and procedures has been given more attention and priority than during my college days in the late 1970s.
At present, a higher education teaching job requires a master’s degree or doctorate in a specialized field or discipline. Getting this means writing a scholarly work that experts evaluate.
Academic research means inquiry, but more systematic than the everyday way of getting and relaying information done by Marites, Maris, Marisa, Marrieta, Marisol, Mariposa, and others, including their male counterparts who included Tolits, Antonio, John, and Don.
Authentic or legitimate research allows us to distinguish information from disinformation and misinformation.
We can practice systematic research in everyday life by going through the root or essence of the phenomenon under question in search of data to support a conclusion.
This process can be applied to getting evidence before accusing a neighbor of mischievous acts, siding with the position of the business sector or the religious group, judging a local candidate’s ability to perform when elected into office, making decisions to purchase a public facility, and so on.
With technology produced by research institutions, knowledge grows as more information is uncovered, discovered, corrected, disseminated, and accepted by many people.
Thus, formal research is self-sustaining because it progresses through the technology it produces. But more questions emerge as new findings are established—it becomes a never-ending search for knowledge.
Technology, such as in the fields of communication and transportation, food production and processing, medicine and health, and so on, has tremendously altered or transformed human relationships and social interactions.
Nations become closer, and the world is like a village where real-time discoveries, inventions, innovations, and information easily spread throughout the globe.
Meanwhile, basic research provides the science for discovery and innovation, guiding policy-making and program formulation.
The goal is to maximize the benefits and minimize or prevent the negative consequences of technologies and decisions to humans and the environment.
Even if research per se is reasonable given the excellent intention, the results may be either good or bad, depending on its consequences relative to the interest of the producers or users.
Sociologist Robert K. Merton reminds us that anything that has a function or is beneficial also has unintended negative consequences. ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, for example, may have made research convenient and faster, but they can be abused for selfish gain.
Similarly, access to online information is easier now than before, but cases of plagiarism and other unethical practices in publication and other forms of disseminating information are common.
Moreover, the pressure to publish in academic institutions and the proliferation of predatory journals have turned publishing into a lucrative business.
Let’s put research in academia and everyday life as an inquiry tool to good use in improving human and nonhuman quality of life. Continue researching—formal or informal—and distinguish information as opinion or fact, biased or objective, and for self-interest or the common good.
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Author’s email: [email protected]
