All They Really Need to Know They Learned at Google U
January 15, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Autism mother Jenny McCarthy has often spoken about how she earned the equivalent of a Ph.D. from the ”University of Google” while researching treatments to “recover” her son Evan from autism. She’s not the only student to have matriculated at this fine (if virtual) university: Rather than “trolling though musty books for their term papers,” kids these days are also “regurgitating whatever material pops up in their Web browser.” Who needs a “brain dead neurologist” (as McCarthy refers to one of her son’s doctors) when you’ve got the U of Goo?
Very funny. It must be bizarre having all that information at your fingertips as a student. When I was in high school we still relied on books. I imagine for teachers it would be a bit stressful grading papers and wondering if it really came from a student or not.
“I imagine for teachers it would be a bit stressful grading papers and wondering if it really came from a student or not.”
I run into that problem more often than I would wish!
That’s why we have that little thing called “Turnitin.com” now. If you don’t have students turn their papers in via this scanning service (part of the Blackboard package), I highly recommend it. It works pretty darned well. And you can also cross reference it through other professors at your school who use Turnitin to see if students are plagiarizing themselves when they’re supposed to be doing original work in each class. It’s a valuable tool in this instant-information age that makes cheating so easy and attractive for some students.
he he
Wow, does this hit so close to home right now. Y is writing a paper for art class and I’m trying to make sure she’s not plagiarizing since everything she has is off the computer. She already struggles to write informative papers; now she has this to add to it.
I’ve used Turnitin.com — but the most effective plagiarizer-finder for me has been Google itself. I’ve found “papers” submitted by students by typing in a sentence with a curious enough choice of words.
You can rest assured, all the content on this blog in 100% by me (typos too).
She earned the equivalent of a Ph.D. from the ”University of Google.”
This woman gets under my skin, is she that dim?
I would much rather have my son visit the “brain dead neurologist,” at least he went to a real university! I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want my son having anything to do with someone who thinks that they have earned the equivalent of a Ph.D from ”University of Google.” Jenny is a joke.
I guess she thinks shes Miss Autism Mother Know It All because she learned from Google how to recover her son! Kiss my butt Jenny and take your “recover” crap someplace else. (that is what I would say to her if I seen her in person)
As if Jenny is the only parent that sat around for hours on end searching for answers in regards to a diagnosis on Google. Only difference is I don’t claim “recovery” and then write a book about it. I like KC’s mommy’s comment above.
As someone who has spent a large portion of my adult life around Ph.D.s of different branches of science and also have some experience with google…I don’t care how much you click, they are not equivalent.
I wonder if those students know that wikipedia can be *ahem* somewhat unreliable depending on the subject. It’s tougher in the computer age…I had a talk recently with my high schooler on the distinction between citation and plagiarism. I don’t know if that is particularly highlighted in HS.
I’m not sure if it is—-more than a few of my students have reacted in surprise when I told them that just copying without quotations is not “correct use of a source.”
Wikipedia is very convenient if you have to look up the phrases usually used in ‘Charades’ or a loose definition of a lot of things, including autism. But I wouldn’t dare base a paper/essay on it, or use it as a resource for anything official. I also wouldn’t want to use just the information you can find by searching the internet to fully base my opinion on anything on.
Wikipedia is actually even a pretty tame and trusty thing to get your information from, compared to some of the commercial, spammy, money-making scheming sites out there. I really do wonder why anyone would actually believe a google add that promotes having the cure to autism in big flashy letters and urging you to click on it. It just screams “I am rubbish! Click me if you want to see a hundred pop-ups, spend money on nonsense products and get some spyware on your computer to as a free gift!”.
Jenny’s son had/has epilepsy, as is my understanding — or some episodes of epilepsy. She went to a top neuro doc and her son went on the appropriate meds. As I understand, he then got better/improved/or whatever the appropriate term may be. He got services from the Regional Center because it’s very simple in several parts of LA to get services for a young child who displays any type of “autistic symptoms” … which does not imply a 299 dx. of autism. When it was clear the meds had worked and his epilepsy was under control, his services from the Regional Center were removed. Had Jenny wanted to interpret this another way, she could have retained an atty and gotten the RC to keep him as a client. Instead, she used this being removed as proof that he was “recovered”.
My students are prohibited from citing Wikipedia as a source. They’re welcome to use it as a starting point for their research–the linked citations at the bottom of an entry can be useful–but they cannot cite it.
Kristina, I, too, have done a Google when the prose seems to be above the potential reached. If Turnitin gives me a reading of >20%, they have to do a rewrite. And I prohibit verbatim quotes in general unless they are from an expert who is giving an *opinion.* Otherwise, students must paraphrase.
I’m no fan of Ms. McC, but I’ll just play devil’s advocate: I do think that the interwebs have somewhat leveled the playing field ITO access to information. There’s a lot of reliable stuff I’ve heard about, though not necessarily through Googling, on the Net, including Quackwatch, the estimable Wrightslaw website, and some parent advocacy groups that gave me good information on ABA. I’ll be eternally grateful for those resources.
Also, like a lot of parents, I had the experience of getting dismissed as “Mom” by the pediatricians/early childhood experts I went to (late bloomer/different timetable/you’re worrying for nothing/let’s wait and see, etc.). Doing my own reading and comparing notes w/other parents strengthened my belief in my intuition and led me to answers that helped me and my children.
So I don’t begrudge her the “Google U” comment particularly; the problem is that the course catalogue is infinite and she doesn’t seem to know which courses to take…..
Ads, however, are not reliable sources. And not knowing which links are ads somewhat cheapens the “degree”, no?
Well said, um, emily. One thing I try to teach my students is to consider the source when evaluating information. We actually analyze agenda and bias in information on the Web (in the context of science, health, and medicine).
I have to admit I did find that funny. Especially considering what she’s saying because of the said university (Kristina, do you have a course over where you are about crystals and indigos? I’m somehow sure not).
Cliff
Upper-case Emily: I’m a fledgling academic in my past life (ABD in English), so yes, I agree that evaluating sources is huge (my dad was a librarian). But as I said, the Net does give parents a lot of informational capital, which I’ve found incredibly helpful both in establishing cred w/paternalistic types and in knowing where to look for help.
Emily said,
“analyze agenda and bias in information on the Web”
Absolutely. Even one of the developers of the web cautioned that misinformation and information propagate at about equal rates with the misinformation having a slight edge if it is controversial or has emotional appeal. I appreciate the info-access of the internet and google, but depending on the subject, casual surfing brings up a lot of junk and pseudoscience.
Does anyone recall the new search engine that purports to stick to validated sources of science and medicine?
Hey, I’m all for access of information to everyone, but you have to determine so many things when you find stuff on the Net – the source, the research behind the information, who the information is coming from and the agenda behind it. It’s definitely one of those good/bad situations because people can interpret things in so many ways.
Books were a most trustworthy resource for many because a lot of research had to go into for it to be published. On the Internet, however, anyone and everyone can put up a site and put forth whatever information they want….regardless of whether it’s wrong or not.
This “Google University” stuff cracks me up. Using the logic Jenny uses of “I researched everything online, therefore I’m an expert in the autism field” must surely mean there are also a lot of sex experts out there as well, thanks to their, um, fervent research on Google.
Whatever “degree” JMcC “earned” from GooU, remember that it did not include the vaguest knowledge of Autistic Adults(as evident in her interview with Larry King). That degree is called B.S.