There is so much information as well as misinformation to be found on the Internet. Depending on the view that we search for, there are multiple results that show up and they might leave us unsure about which ones are based on a grain of truth and which ones present facts and true experiences. I have M. K. Marteens with me today and she is sharing about finding reliable resources to back your fictional endeavors. M. K. Marteens is a pen name of a reader, writer, blogger and scientist with a PhD in molecular biology and a love for Science fiction. Her short story collection Amaranthine and post-apocalyptic novel The Aftermath are in the final stages of editing.
I hope you will learn a lot from this article in Creator’s Roulette. For me, it came at a very good time when I was finding I needed to refocus and get some help distinguishing ideas based on their strength.
On Finding Reliable Resources
There’s a popular saying that’s often cited in the writing community claiming you should “write what you know”. As much as that is true and your own life experience will add valuable depth to your writing, as fiction writers, we’d only be able to write a single story if we opted to blindly stick to that rule. So, inevitably, at some point, we’re forced to research aspects of our WIPs that we’re not familiar with. And that can be literally anything: character occupation, engine mechanics, political systems, battle strategy, newly discovered planets or English grammar if you’re a non-native speaker like me. I could go on with the list, but I’ll just let you fill in the blanks with your own search results.
When we, as writers, find ourselves in such situations where we don’t have enough knowledge to proceed and pure imagination is not enough, finding reliable resources becomes indispensable. But before discussing the technicalities of “how-to”, let’s get one thing straight. There are no 100% reliable resources. I’ll elaborate throughout the text why it’s important to start with this assumption and to do that, I need to tell you a little bit about my background.
It’s not a secret that M K Marteens is my pen name, and the reason I use a pen name is that to this date I’m actively writing and publishing scientific papers and textbook chapters using my legal name. My aim is to separate my scientific (reliable) writing from science fiction and fantasy to avoid any possible confusion.
“Now, hold on,” you might interrupt me, “you’re writing textbook chapters and scientific papers and still you tell us there are no 100% reliable resources? If anything, textbooks and papers should be 100% reliable, right?”
WRONG. There’s actually a famous example from the field of molecular biology. A major textbook had a beautiful picture of DNA packaging in the cell that got picked up by school books across the world and translated to many languages. The only problem was that about one half of the figure was based on proven facts while the other part was a plausible scientific hypothesis that was yet to be examined. And while the scientists who wrote the textbook where the original figure appeared knew that, the information got lost somewhere along the way. And guess what? The hypothesis was later disproved but the picture remained the same in many books… for years. As a result, children and young adults got exposed to the wrong information from sources that should’ve been reliable but failed to update on time. In fact, I learned from that same picture and only found out it was wrong in my PhD. I’m using molecular biology as an example here, but the same applies to other fields. For instance, many history books still claim Christopher Columbus discovered America when in fact Native Americans and even Vikings discovered it before him. And writing advice? It was not the same in 1900 as it is today.
So, am I saying that even textbooks and scientific papers can not be trusted?
No, that’s not exactly what I’m saying. I’m trying to tell you that you shouldn’t put blind trust in anything you read, watch or hear without doing some fact-checking.
Every resource should be approached with a healthy dose of skepticism because information can get outdated as quickly as the rules of acceptable social (distancing) behaviour changed in 2020.
I could write a whole other blog explaining why that happens, but for now, let’s say it’s because of limitations. Limitations of methods, tools, experience, perspective, etc. Let’s compare those limitations to trying to read this blog shortsighted. Simply put: without the right glasses this blog might look like an indistinguishable grey blur. But even if you would have glasses by your side, how do you know that you have the right glasses that give the sharpest possible image? You don’t. Not unless there’s someone to tell you there’s something else you should see, or you get a better pair of glasses.
Only a person aware of all the limitations can truly judge the reliability of given information. That is why every scientific paper goes through the process of “peer review” where three other experts need to look at the research study and try to find all the flaws. After authors address all the issues the paper can be officially published, and then the scientific journal picks it up, authors tweet about it, newspapers digest the information for a general audience, textbooks or guide books get published, wiki page appears or gets updated, documentaries are made and bloggers talk about it. Somewhere along that line of information transfer, you will stumble upon it while doing your research and think “ah, interesting, I should add this to my book.”
But if sometimes even experts get it wrong, how will you be able to judge the quality and reliability of the information or a resource, especially for genres like science fiction or historical fiction? It’s not easy, but there are a few things you can do, and I’ll distil them into 5 steps.
Step 1 : Go as upstream on the information chain as your background and knowledge allow.
Did you get the information from a blogger? Who else talks about it? Do they cite or list any written resources? Can you find a newspaper article or Wikipedia page about it? Do newspapers cite textbooks or papers? Can you approach and/or understand the scientific article and original scientific finding?
Step 2 : Search for corroboration
Did multiple disciplines of science or multiple independent researchers/research groups reach the same conclusion? Sometimes it will not be exactly the same conclusion but a part of it, and if you look at the historic overview you will notice that often many people brought together a puzzle of common knowledge by adding small pieces to it.
Step 3 : Search for controversies.
Now, this is a tough one because in a world of disinformation and photoshop there are controversies about almost everything, including the well-documented curvature of the Earth. Sometimes it will be hard to distinguish fact from fiction, but a good rule of thumb is searching for hard evidence. If one theory is supported by hard evidence and experts worldwide while the other simply tries to disprove it, I’d say trusting a theory supported by evidence is a safer bet. However, if there are multiple theories that are all supported by some evidence or even experts in one field debate about their validity, keep in mind that one – or all – could turn out to be wrong in time.
Step 4 : Get help
The ideal kind of help would be talking to an expert in the field while doing research for the book but if you don’t know anyone, finding a twitter account of a well-established institution is a good alternative. The second point at which you should aim to get help is in the editing process when ideally someone knowledgeable should check your facts.
Step 5 : Repeat
Did you start writing your book or following a Twitter account 3 years ago? Perhaps it’s time to re-check your resources and facts.
These 5 steps will help you navigate through the maize of information available on the internet, and keep your facts in check. Is there a chance that you will still get something wrong? Yes, unfortunately there is. But in the end you are a fiction writer and you have a degree of freedom that scientists don’t have. So do your best, don’t obsess about it and try to enjoy the process along the way.
Did you ever take something for a fact and only later find out it was outdated or wrong?
Find M. K. Marteens on Twitter and Instagram. Thank you so much for reading and learning more researching reliable resources! When you apply these strategies, do let us know in the comments if you found them helpful!
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