It’s a curious contradiction, isn’t it? You take issue with being told to “do your own research,” yet you seem to have found ample time and energy to compose a critique of that very suggestion. That alone undermines the premise that such a request is somehow insensitive to people’s time constraints.

Let’s be clear ~ encouraging independent verification is not laziness ~ it’s intellectual responsibility. To dismiss it as such is to conflate guidance with obligation. No one is denying that people navigate pressures yet invoking those realities as a blanket justification for outsourcing one’s critical thinking doesn’t strengthen your argument ~ it weakens it.

If this space is, as you say, for sharing research, then surely it follows that participants should engage with that material actively, not passively consume it as pre-digested truth. Otherwise, what you’re advocating for isn’t a community of inquiry ~ it’s a relay system for unexamined information.

And while it’s true that not everyone can dedicate hours to analysis, the solution isn’t to discourage the principle of verification, it’s to apply it proportionally. Even a modest effort to question, cross-check, or contextualize what one reads is infinitely more valuable than accepting it wholesale simply because it’s been conveniently presented.

So the issue isn’t that “do your own research” is unhelpful ~ it’s that it asks something of the reader. And perhaps that’s the real discomfort is not a lack of time, but a reluctance to take ownership of one’s understanding.