Page 127 - Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

11 4 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING

investigators when they wrote about their research, thereby creating a 'secondary'
or indirect source (see below). However, direct sources do contain values and
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elements of interpretation. The importance of the distinction between direct
and indirect sources, then, is not that one is 'fact' and the other interpretation
but, rather, one of context. For example, the comments made by an advertising
agency director about nationalistic television commercials must be understood in
relation to the person who made these comments, why, when, how, and in what
situation the comments were made, and so on. If we do an experiment by
measuring the biological reactions of people watching nationalist advertising
under controlled conditions, then we, in effect, become the authors of that data
(via the way that we establish the experiment). We would need to ask ourselves
the same sorts of questions to understand the meaning of the data we gather. By
doing so, we will recognise that the contexts in which this direct 'evidence' of
nationalist advertising is gathered is different to that in which we use it as part of
our argument.
In every case, then, direct sources can only be used effectively when we think
about the context, as well as the content, of the information we draw from them.
Sometimes, understanding this context involves asking questions about where and
when the information was produced; by whom; for what purpose; on the basis of
what knowledge; in relation to which issues. Equally, the context can be under-
stood by thinking about our own engagement with the source. For example,
scientists must check, when performing experiments, that they have established the
experimental procedure properly, that there are no errors in their procedures, that
they are reliable observers of the events, and so on. In each discipline, in each field
of endeavour, there are basic rules that we must follow, and assumptions that we
must make, when seeking to gather information from direct sources; there are also
basic understandings about how to consider the context of the information. They
are too numerous and complex to discuss here in detail, but two examples can be
drawn from history and chemistry. In history, a standard approach is to think about
the way in which a person's social position (class, race, gender, and so on) can
influence and be seen in what they have said or written. In chemistry, experimental
design is always used to control and maintain quality of experimental work: the
information gained through an experiment is always assessed in the context of the
way the experiment was performed. In general terms, we must learn the rules that
are part of our context and consciously apply them so that we can use direct sources
effectively.
Indirect sources

As noted above, a direct source differs from an indirect source. Indirect sources
involve the reports and analysis of direct information by other people. Reports,
articles, and books by scholars are the main category of secondary sources that we
tend to use, especially when we are beginning to develop our knowledge about an
issue. Once again, the key to using such information is always to think about the