Pluralistic ignorance is an information problem, as Andrew K. Woods, a legal scholar who introduced me to the concept, points out. It happens because we don’t know what’s going on in other people’s minds. Whenever we’re faced with a socially dicey, delicate subject — Do other people notice that this company is in trouble? How much sex are other students having? — we’re too squeamish to talk openly. Without correct information, we get it wrong.
Thompson, Clive. Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better, New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2014, p. 253.
If you’ve ever attended an intro session at your school’s library, you’ve listened to the librarians lower their voices and speak in reverential tones about peer review: the touchstone that separates rigorous research from mere opinion, hearsay, and the untutored opinions of your know-it-all roommate. At its most basic level, peer review is a form of quality control, a process that scholars came up with in the 1700s to protect the public from shady information. It gets its name from the fact that before a study is published, it’s evaluated by experts in the field — “peers” — who decide whether the work passes muster.
Caulfield, Mike, and Samuel S. Wineburg. Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press, 2023, p.122.
It took a few months for us to realize that allowing patrons to use the service without having visited a library home page first produced problems. First, patrons entering the service from the generic Library LAWLINE promotional page did not always understand that they would be getting help with legal research. Some thought they would be getting free legal advice (we became adept at referring patrons to free and low-cost legal service information).
Matheson, Scott. “Library Lawline: Collaborative Virtual Reference in a Special Library Consortium.” In Digital versus Non-Digital Reference: Ask a Librarian Online and Offline, edited by Jessamyn West. New York: Routledge, 2012, p. 111.
