Fear and Loathing

1. In this podcast, Ben Tryer talked bout how he wanted to go about doing his research because he wanted to have an informed opinion about the resolution for immigration. However, what he realized was that most of his research appealed to his original fear of having immigrants in his town. The issue with his discovery was that most of his facts, statisitics, and conclusions were taken from sources that took information out of context in efforts of raising oppostion to immigration. This goes to show that when doing research of an kind, credible resources or necessary to conjure up a clear, concise, and credible opinion.

2. There are quite a few steps that can be taken to ensure the credibilty of sources. Stay away from articles that have an author who is not a professionial in their field. Researching authors is a wonderful way to tell whether or not information is solid or lacking. Professional websites, peer reviews, scientific journals, and census reports are a few examples of sources I find to be acceptable.

3. When speaking about controversial topics, I do believe that it is possible to discuss it without bias, though I feel that it's rare. I think that sometimes, people go into controversies with a mentality and the desire to back it up, without knowing all the facts. Unbias research is something that every writer should aspire to, but when a subject is personal to them I can see why it is difficult to be open-minded to other perspectives.

4. On that note, the community I will be using for my paper is MEDLIFE, a medical student organization on campus that strives to serve low-income families.