Mike’s Google Answers Challenge
This is a lovely challenge.
Mike’s question about John Edwards’ career as a malpractice attorney and whether he really did win most of his cases by linking cerebral palsy to doctors’ errors in the delivery room is deceptively simple. It might be easy to locate materials about this on the Internet, but as Mike points out, he thinks the source he found is biased. It’s very important to be able to evaluate information in a claim like this because of the rumors, lies, and mudslinging that happen during political campaigns. As many of us know, it doesn’t take much for someone to make a false claim look very true on the Internet.
I’m not sure what kind of resources Google Answers’ people use or have access to. I probably would not begin this search on the Internet and may not use the Internet except to learn if (and if so, how) the Edwards campaign deals with this rumor on their Web site, another biased source that may not have the complete, honest story. (Note: I don’t mean that statement as anything specific about the Edwards campaign. Political literature, especially campaign literature, often has biases and may not tell the complete, honest truth.) The Web site promotes the book Four Trials, which seems to be about his career and may include information relevent to Mike’s question. (It’s free with a $35 campaign contribution.)
I’m going to take a wild guess that part of the reason why Mike’s question still sits there is that it’s priced too low. According to the FAQ, “Setting a price too low to compensate for the time required may result in your question not receiving an answer. The more you are willing to pay, the more likely your question is to get answered quickly.” It might take some effort for someone to come up with a synopsis of his work if s/he can’t find one that already exists. That alone could mean the Google Answers person earns less than minimum wage responding to Mike.
Mike could take his question to a public library for free. (Well, okay, for the cost of his taxes that support the library, so it’s not exactly free, but it’s not like he has to shell out an additional $20 if someone there can help him with his inquiry.) One of the advantages about using Google Answers over some libraries is that you can pay someone to do the research for you. If Mike went to a public librarian with this question, the public librarian might be able to tell Mike what to do at each step to find the answer on his own, but he’d probably still have to do the work unless the librarian can find the answer quickly. At a university reference desk I worked at, we would answer some quick reference questions over the phone and help people in person, but we would encourage them to do their own research if it was going to take us more than five minutes to get an answer to them on the phone or more than about 15 minutes of us working with them in person (unless there were special circumstances, like computer problems). That library had a strong teaching mission: the librarians think it is better to teach the students how to do their own research than to do the work for them. Will Mike learn anything to help him do this kind of research on his own next time if he uses Google Answers? (Maybe that aspect of a reference interaction isn’t important to him and many others.) Some libraries and archives have people who can answer indepth inquiries like this for the public, especially if the answer is in a special collection unique to the institution. Special librarians often do research like this for their clients.
(I had no idea people would be so interested in and responsive toward what I wrote about Google Answers competing with librarians. I figured it was just more text going out into the black hole of the blogosphere.)
Addenda 2/18: I sent Mike the work I did on his inquiry this evening. I’m waiting for his reaction. I’ll blog more about it after I have his blessing to do so.
12/9/04: My answer
