By Ms. J. Goldberg, 3/17/23
When researching a controversial issue in order to form your own independent opinion, it's important to begin your research in sources that are as unbiased as possible. Why? Because of anchoring bias, our deeply-ingrained human tendency to remember and believe the first piece of information we learn about a topic.
I always think of this in evolutionary terms. Imagine an ancient ancestor of y
ours as a child out walking with their mother. The mother points out a plant and says, "See that plant? The pretty pink flowers? Do NOT eat that plant! It's poison!" If the child remembers the warning and heeds it, the child survive grows up, has children, and becomes your ancestor. If not? That kid does not live long enough to become anybody's ancestor! We are descended from people who survived by believing and remembering the first thing they heard. This tendency does not serve us well in the Information Age. (This is just a story to help us think about anchoring bias. You can get into the real science of cognitive biases, if you want to.)
Beginning research on a controversial issue on Google leads our cognitively biased brains into an easy trap. Some search results begin with advertisements (i.e. "sponsored" results). Others begin with a selection of items from news sources, some of which may be editorial in nature. When there are no ads or news items, the order in which you see results is based on Google's PageRank algorithm, which is a long story, but it means that the order of the results varies (sometimes even throughout the day), and that they are not li
sted in order of accuracy or quality, but use other algorithmic factors to determine which results you see first, second, third, or hundredth at any given time.
Those top results for a controversial issue are likely to be from an organization that supports a particular perspective or policy on the issue you're trying to learn about. A private organization is under no obligation to
explain the pros and cons of the issue, or to use neutral language to describe their opponents' views. They are free to be as biased as they want to be, and that's great! That's freedom of expression! But it's not helpful to students trying to learn about an issue and form their own independent opinions.
What Should You Do Instead?
Begin your research in the Northern Highlands Library databases. Start with Opposing Viewpoints in Context. If you find a Portal Page for your issue, begin by reading the Overview Essay at the top, making sure to click to see the whole article. This Overview Essay will introduce you to the history, important figures, vocabulary, and relevant laws about the topic. It will also introduce you to a range of opinions about the topic, describing them as fairly as possible. 
Just for now, you should skip the boxes immediately below, the ones labeled "Featured Viewpoints" and "Viewpoints." Look instead at Reference, Infographics, Statistics and/or Primary Sources. After reading a few, stop and think about the opinions you have begun to develop.Once you have a clear idea about what you think, start to explore the Viewpoints, Magazine Articles, Newspaper Articles, Audio, Video, and Images categories. Make sure that you read Viewpoints you expect to agree with and those you expect to disagree with. If you change your mind, that's fine! A strong persuasive essay might very well make you consider the issue in a new light.
If your topic is global, follow the same procedure in Global Issues in Context, which is organized in a similar way.
Now You're Ready for the Internet!
Armed with facts, history, vocabulary, and a sense of the range of opinions people have about this issue, you are now equipped to evaluate critically the additional information available online without falling into agreement with the first source you encounter. You gave yourself the space to make up your own mind first, instead of leaving your anchor-biased brain at the mercy of whatever happened to come up first on Google today.