A Study Here, A Study There

Citing sources has become the new journalistic catechism, even though source confidentiality was once its cornerstone. This practice, far from guaranteeing truth, often masks a resignation of critical thinking in favor of conformism disguised as rigor.

Disinformation, an ancient instrument

Awareness of “fake news” is presented to us as a contemporary urgency, supposedly born with social media. False information has always existed: think of the official photographs of the USSR, where dignitaries who fell from grace disappeared from photos over the course of purges, history was constantly being rewritten. Chris Marker, in Letter from Siberia (1957), already brilliantly demonstrated how three different commentaries on the same images could produce three radically opposing realities.

The accusation of disinformation itself becomes an instrument of power. The Covid period revealed this mechanism with troubling clarity: whistleblowers were quickly labeled “conspiracy theorists” and their information qualified as “fake news.” Yet many of these “false information” pieces proved accurate, regarding the origin of the virus, the effectiveness of health measures, or the side effects of certain treatments... This discrediting served a policy that required the absence of contradiction to justify unprecedented peacetime restrictions on freedom, indebting states, as well as enabling massive sales of experimental products.

This strategy allowed what Naomi Klein would call a “shock doctrine”: the exploitation of a crisis to impose economic and social transformations otherwise impossible. The massive state debt and record profits of certain industries during this period perfectly illustrate this crisis capitalism, where truth becomes, so to speak, the first victim of economic opportunism.

The cult of sources as a substitute for thinking

A new doxa has taken hold: all information must be “sourced,” ideally with multiple references (but how does one arbitrate the choice of these references?). This practice, presented as a guarantee of informational seriousness, actually conceals a real perversity. It doesn’t validate the information, as one can easily select sources that confirm our biases, but shifts responsibility. If the information proves false, it will be the fault of the sources, not of those who chose and relayed them.

We are witnessing here a profound epistemological shift, which unfortunately paves the way for violent extremists, who rightly denounce it and use it to convince others to join them in their sinister designs. The multiplication of sources doesn’t guarantee truth; it creates what Jean Baudrillard would call a “simulacrum” of truth. As he wrote in Simulacra and Simulation (1981): “Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality.” Sources become models that generate an artificial reality, validated by their mere accumulation.

This practice presupposes that sources would be intrinsically objective. Yet the choice of sources is already a subjective act, oriented by our presuppositions. We select those that reinforce our vision, creating an informational echo chamber while claiming objectivity. Pierre Bourdieu, in On Television (1996), already warned about this phenomenon of “circular circulation of information”, where journalists cite each other, creating an artificial truth through repetition.

The industry of studies and its structural biases

“Studies” have become the new holy scriptures of our era. “A study proves that...” suffices to close a debate, as if these works were gospel. But who funds these studies? With what sample? What methodology? For what purpose? These essential questions are almost never asked, and we barely cite the sponsors of studies and never the contractors who carried them out, as if it were an objective practice!

The private study industry produces necessarily oriented results. A study financed by the sugar industry on the harms of fat, research sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry on the effectiveness of a drug, etc. Conflict of interest is not the exception but the rule. As John Ioannidis demonstrates in his now-classic article “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” (2005), the majority of published studies suffer from methodological biases, insufficient sample sizes, or pressures to publish positive results, not to mention issues of scientific or commercial competition.

More troubling still, studies are far more often interested in opinions rather than actual behaviors. Asking people what they think rather than observing what they do introduces an additional layer of subjectivity. Social psychology clearly teaches the gap between declared attitudes and actual behaviors. Public opinion, this “queen of the world” according to Pascal, thus becomes doubly deceptive: first because it doesn’t reflect actions, then because it is itself shaped by the studies that claim to measure it, as well as by the way questions are posed.

For authentic critical thinking

True critical thinking doesn’t consist of accumulating citations and references. This accumulation relates more to what Kant would call “intellectual minority,” the inability to think for oneself without the tutelage of others. In What Is Enlightenment? (1784), he exhorted us: “Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!” He paid a very high social price for this in his own life, justifiably in my view.

Cultivating critical thinking means first questioning the legitimacy and position of sources. It’s sometimes deliberately choosing not to cite them, recognizing their uselessness or orientation. It’s daring to conduct one’s own investigations, however modest, rather than blindly relying on “studies” as instituted external objects. Hannah Arendt reminded us that “thinking without banisters” is the very essence of critical thinking.

Also, critical thinking recognizes that there is no pure objectivity in understanding the social world. As Nietzsche emphasized: “There are no facts, only interpretations.” This position, far from leading to nihilistic relativism, instead invites us to assume the partiality of our gaze while remaining open to the multiplicity of perspectives. To consider the complexity of a world rather than a simplistic, supposedly “sourced” explanation.

The richness of assumed subjectivity

Assuming one’s subjectivity is not a weakness, it’s a strength and a truth. Each of us perceives aspects of the world invisible to others, and it is precisely this diversity of perspectives that enriches our collective understanding. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in Phenomenology of Perception (1945), showed that our body situated in the world is the very condition of all knowledge: we can only know from an embodied point of view.

Sharing our personal vision, argued and assumed as such, contributes more to collective intelligence than the mechanical repetition of supposedly objective studies. This approach recognizes that truth emerges not from the accumulation of supposedly neutral data, but from dialogue between diverse and authentic perspectives.

The objective is not to achieve an impossible objectivity, that “view from nowhere” that Thomas Nagel denounced as an illusion, but to progress in awareness of the complexity of phenomena and the multiplicity of their possible interpretations. This approach requires humility and openness: recognizing the partiality of our vision while sharing it with conviction.

Resisting the monopoly of “truth”

Authentic critical thinking doesn’t seek to establish a unique and definitive truth. It resists any attempt to impose a hegemonic point of view, whether it adorns itself with the trappings of science, fact-checking, or journalistic objectivity. The proliferation of “studies” and the tyranny of “sourcing” paradoxically participate in the impoverishment of critical thinking by creating the illusion that there exists a truth accessible through the accumulation of references.

Faced with this drift, I plead for a return to the personal exercise of critical judgment. Not a lazy relativism where all opinions would be equal, but rigorous thinking that assumes its limits and perspectives. For it is in the confrontation of our assumed subjectivities, in the sharing of our singular views of the world, that a richer and more nuanced understanding of the complex reality that surrounds us can emerge.

Critical thinking is not submission to the authority of sources, but the courage to think for oneself while recognizing that our thought is only one voice in the polyphonic concert of human knowledge.