A31
Public Record
Excerpt From article.

Left To Their Own Devices: An examination of human tendencies in researching information.

Humans are inquisitive, and inquisition invariably leads to distraction. Studies show that when faced with a task, most people seek out distraction, even in cases where they are incentivized to focus on their given task. […] While there are many studies surrounding differences in individuals’ learning habits, styles, and behaviors, research about the act of research is fairly limited. […] Each person’s flow of research depends entirely upon the individual who is seeking out information. The researcher will follow whichever references appeal to her interests, and those references will determine which information she learns most about. If left to their own devices, no two researchers will ever learn the same information about a given topic. […]

Due to the lack of academic literature on this specific topic, this essay will refer to a real-world example from an ongoing peer-reviewed study by Dr. Kemmith Whittle, Ph.P., entitled Bobbie Froun: A case-study of an entirely average person. This study is the first longitudinal case-study focused on the life of a person without any known disabilities or disorders. The purpose of the study is to provide insights into an entirely ‘normative’ person (excluding the fact that any “entirely normative person” wouldn’t normally have their actions observed and recorded). […] All of Dr. Whittle’s studies have been thoroughly peer-reviewed by the scientific community.

I wanted to see how Bobbie would operate in a self-driven learning environment in which he had an external incentive to succeed. I tasked Bobbie with researching a bird called the Northeast Tanker Crow. Bobbie would have one hour each day to spend researching the All Knowledge database; if he performed well on a multiple-choice test, I offered to double his weeks’ allowance for one week. I wanted to create an environment in which Bobbie had an incentive to do well in his task, but not so much incentive that his performance would be influenced by stress. I created the test beforehand, so as not to let my observation of Bobbie’s research skew my questions. I informed him that I would not be present for his research, but that it would be recorded.

For the first twenty-five minutes of his research, Bobbie was very diligent. He took exhaustive notes on the Tanker Crow's origination, its divergence from previous species, its unique beak shape, and its diet. Under “Diet,” he followed a reference to the Horkish Ladybug, where he then spent several minutes looking at different pictures of the insect. He read extensively about the bug's tendency to implode into a poisonous gas post-mortem, causing most predators to die shortly after eating it. Within the first half-hour of research, Bobbie’s attention had already waned from the topic at hand.

This wasn’t a huge divergence from Bobbie's assigned research, as the Horkish Ladybug is the main food source for the crow. However, Bobbie then followed a reference to the Great Horkish Massacre, wherein the people of Horkfield (an ancient village just east of what is now West Delihughe, New Lambden) sneaked into the town of Churchestershire one night, their sworn rivals, and filled all of its residents’ food stuffs with these ladybugs. The following afternoon, the entire population of Churchestershire imploded, and the Horkese people moved into their homes. The irony of the massacre, Bobbie read, was that these Horkish Ladybugs, now free from their greatest and only predator, the Northeast Tanker Crow, thrived in their new environment. Eventually these insects overran the Horkese residents, imploding many of them by hiding in their food stuffs — forcing the rest back to their prior homes in Horkfield.

At this point, Bobbie had been researching for about one hour. Seeing that he was already side-tracked, I entered the room to ask how his research was going. He closed the page about the massacre and said, "Fine!”. I suggested that we finish for the day, and that he could continue his research tomorrow. […]

What I find significant about this report, and what Dr. Whittle neglects to comment upon, is that Bobbie wasn’t avoiding research — he’d found an interest in the Horkish Ladybug and its resulting massacre — but he had veered from his assigned topic. It seems to me that perhaps Bobbie just didn't align with the way this information in the way Dr. Whittle would expect. Whittle continues:

I asked Bobbie the following day if he had yet read about the Tanker Crow's sleek body and beak shape, which allow it to fly straight through its predators’ skulls. He seemed excited about this fact and was eager to return to his research, so of course I encouraged him to do so.

Bobbie began where he had left off, at the diet of the Northeast Tanker Crows. He learned that these crows subside on insects and cave water, and that they are the only predator of the Horkese Ladybugs, as no other animal, birds or otherwise, can survive the stomach implosion. In most animals, he learned, the insect is crushed during the digestive process, thereby mixing the ladybug’s endoskeleton and its predator’s stomach acid, thereby causing the violent reaction. The Northeast Tanker Crow, however, digests these insects so quickly and delicately that the bugs never have the chance to implode. Bobbie learned that calcium carbonate drips from the stalactites in their caves into the crows’ water-supply, which neutralizes the bug's stomach acid, allowing the birds to safely digest them.

He learned that these birds are found only in the Tringling Caves of East Newburia. Bobbie then followed a reference for the Tringling Caves, and looked at several pictures of them. He read that the bottom of the cave was covered in crow droppings, and that the deep voices of the crows gave the Tringling Caves the distinct sound of “a thousand elderly women laughing.” He learned that these caves received their name from early Horkfield settlers, who believed that the spirits of their matriarchal ancestors resided in these caves.

Bobbie learned that, due to the crow’s tendency to impale human skulls, most people who entered the Tringling caves never returned from them. According to Horkish legend, those who entered the caves were destined to join their ancestors. He learned that "Tringling” was a Horkni word meaning "The Grand Joke,” and these caves were so named because, according to Horkish legend, these spirits would spend the afterlife hysterical at what a wonderful joke life was. Once a person heard the joke, the legend stated, they would immediately join the spirits in eternal laughter.

By this point I knew that very little of this information was relevant to the questions I had prepared for Bobbie’s test. Only eight questions out of thirty were related to the crow’s diet and habitat, and of those, not one of them made mention of the lives or histories of the Horkese people. […]

Bobbie failed Dr. Whittle’s test, and therefore did not receive his temporary salary increase. Whittle has since performed several similar tests with Bobbie, and each of them had similar results. Because of these tests, Bobbie has since stated that he is “bad at learning things on [his] own.” These results instill and reinforce the idea that Bobbie didn’t learn the correct information, when in fact the test questions are subjective to Whittle himself. The information Dr. Whittle chose for the test was the information that aligned most with his own researching interests. […]

Speaking personally, Bobbie’s research is reminiscent of the many occasions I have been tasked with research in my life. I would also venture to guess that it sounds familiar to many readers of this essay, as well (and probably something you’ve experienced while reading this essay). What I would like to posit is the idea that rather than blaming the researcher for poor test results, we should reexamine our testing strategy. […]

Quilite Dellicube, B.s.D.