Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
Tell the supervising botanist that you've completed your research
and decided that the plant is definitely a heliconia
You decide to tell the botanist that you have completed the research. You
will tell him that the plant is a member of the heliconia family as he suspected.
After all, two out of three websites say the same thing. You think the botanist
will be disappointed. You know he was hoping that he had discovered a new
plant.
The botanist asks what you did to confirm your findings. You tell him
that two out of three websites provided the same information. Therefore, you
didn't look any further for answers.
The researcher tells you that your findings are not good enough. The websites
you visited are unedited.
Scientific journals are edited. This means that the publisher checks the
facts and makes sure that everything that is published is accurate. The person
who wrote the material in an unedited site could have made a mistake. The
botanist tells you that you will have to make the trip to the university library
to complete the research.
"You can't believe everything you read," he reminds you. "The Internet
is a classic shortcut. I use it all the time myself," says Douglas Justice,
a botanist at the University of British Columbia's Botanical Garden. "But
you have to understand the limitations of unedited writing."