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20 April 2011
Over the past three days, I have been engaged in a debate with a couple other students about what constitutes a fact. It took place in the discussion board, over a question about how the civil rights movements would have been if lead by Malcom X instead of Martin Luther King. My point was that since Malcom X included violence in his strategies, his style of leadership had less of a chance to appeal to the masses.
One of my fellow students posted a response in which he referenced a page on a website that contained what amounts to an attack on King’s character. The central theme of the page was that King was abusive toward women and had other streaks of violence in his personality. The problem is that the author of the piece provided no proof to back up his claims. In fact, he is the owner of the website. Not only was the piece written in such a way that it presented his claims as fact, but it also made the claim that anyone who didn’t agree with him was only interested in preserving the public perception of King and that questioning his moral integrity is off limits. What’s more, he repeatedly states that his efforts to have his claims published in national media, like USA Today, or the Wall Street Journal were refused. He gives the reason for the refusal as ‘media’ not wanting to spoil the public perception of King.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. And everyone is entitled to be convinced that that opinion is the truth. However, nobody is entitled to use portions of that opinion as an argument in an academic environment. The opinion may be taken as a whole, and observed as an opinion, which can sustain a claim that someone out there has that particular opinion.
This process is called research. Anyone who is doing research on a topic needs an accurate source of information. Otherwise their argument is pointless and meaningless.
So, when the other student began to offer his criticism on my post to the discussion board, based on this website, I responded by asking him if he had an academic source which he could cite to support his argument. His reply was in the negative, but then offered that I am obviously “…among those that do not wish to tarnish the man's reputation”, even though I said nothing of the sort. But you see, I was questioning the validity of the source and according to the website owner, that puts me in a category of people who “…do not want to see the truth”.
Naturally, I responded with a clarification and a suggestion that my fellow classmate might want to consider familiarizing himself with the process of conducting research. In my response, I provided a couple of links to some research guidelines that Kaplan provides their students (in order to avoid situations like these!). The student’s response was somewhat puzzling, and to some extent, not really surprising. He explained that in the two years that he has been attending Kaplan, he has never had a problem with another student questioning his sources. Additionally, he had the professor’s permission to use the source in the discussion, and he does not have to answer to me at all about his references.
After then explaining that I was only speaking out in defense of academic integrity, he didn’t respond. But another student did. Her poorly constructed reply basically said that she was having a problem with not everything in the world being academically based. Which sounds like her solution would be to base everything on academia. She didn’t mean that, of course. She meant that not everything in the world is academically based. But whatever. She then went on to say that just because someone didn’t want to go through the bother of being peer reviewed and/or subjected to fact checking of any kind, doesn’t mean that it is invalid. She also said that she doesn’t see why I’m running away from considering that King may have had a personality flaw.
Just for the record, I never disagreed with the points of the argument. I disagreed with the source of the argument, which is nowhere near based in fact.
For my own peace of mind, I have requested office hours with my professor to find out what her take on it is. Hopefully, she takes my side in the argument. I’ll keep this post updated with the situation.
The entire exchange is available on my website: http://www.richwertzonline.com/school/factorfiction.htm
Here is the link to the website and the ‘source’ in question: http://www.cstnews.com/bm/racial-issues-facing-christians-today-common-sense-for-today/mlk-martin-luther-king-jr-media-ignoring-the-facts/what-kind-of-man-was-martin-luther-king-jr-shtml
Notice that the website frames this under ‘news’. I have some news, too- and I hope a backward idiot at a university uses this statement as an academic reference: aliens have taken over Europe, the Earth is hallow, the Brooklyn Bridge is for sale, cows speak English and Hitler is alive and well and resides in a house in Buenos Aires.
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