This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I decided to finally write about it because I’ve grown a bit annoyed.

Generally, nowadays, citing sources is seen as something you just kinda have to do if you’re making any sort of claim.
The general perception is that if you’re not citing your sources, you can’t be trusted, because there’s no way to verify whether the claim is true or not without a source.

That, however, is fallacious thinking. I don’t know exactly which informal fallacy is at play, but it’s definitely the case. I think the closest would be the Appeal to Authority.

The citation itself does not mean that the claim being made is true or not. All it signals is that there is a ‘source’ for where the information came from. Whether it’s true or not cannot be determined from the citation alone.
It’s here that the fallacious thinking comes in: you are assuming that the information is true just because a source is provided.
Keep in mind that you aren’t checking the source, you just see the little number and assume it must be true.

The reason this is inherently flawed thinking is because any number of things could “go wrong” with the statement being made and the citation being sourced:

• The person might have misinterpreted the information.
  • Say the original source said “Most people dislike pears, but like apples.” This could be misinterpreted as “Many people like apples and others dislike pears.” The original ‘source’ is implying that the same group of people who dislike pears likes apples, while the claim being made from it is suggesting these are separate groups.
• They may be cherry-picking information.
  • “On average, smoking is harmful to the people around them. Though it can have a small positive effect for the smoker.” → “Smoking can have a small positive effect for the smoker.” This takes the good and leaves out the bad.
• They may outright lie.
  • “There were a number of buildings in the area and now there are just a handful.” → “There was a church and it’s still there.”

There are probably more issues, but I just can’t think of them.

The presence of the citation doesn’t make it more reliable, it just makes it slightly easier to check the claim against the source claim.

But now I’d like to point out that the idea that you can’t verify a claim without a citation is strange if you stop to think about it.
Why not?
Why can’t you?
If I say that the population of cats is proportional to humans at 5:1 and, thus, there are too many cats…is my claim impossible to disprove without a citation?

Of course not.

Citations provide only two very specific upsides that don’t make claims with citations inherently more trustworthy:

1. They make it easier for the researcher to keep track of where they found information and to consequently recall it.
2. They make it easier for readers to track the flow of information.

The second one is relevant to the reliability of a claim, but it doesn’t guarantee it. And, again, it’s generally not useful for the majority of people.

I’ll also point out something from experience: academics also tend to not cite sources. I’ve been to several lectures and seen and read a bunch of presentations from academics. Granted, I study in the humanities, so it’s not like I’m doing STEM. However, I’ve never seen academics cite sources at all.
This has resulted in the quirky situation where if I see someone claim to be an academic online…and they don’t cite sources…I’m more inclined to believe them.

I’d also recommend reading this essay by Thorsten Renk. He goes over the ‘Citation Game’ himself, though I think I approached it from a different angle.
What I think is notable is that, according to Renk, authors don’t have the luxury of not citing sources for not being relevant. I won’t spoil the rest, because if you’re one of the people who trusts blindly, you should learn to read.

Now I’ll move onto a thematically related but not directly relevant topic: what about me citing sources on this personal wiki?

Well, generally, I don’t see an issue with not citing sources here. This is partially because what it is I’m talking about is primarily Media. It’s not exactly rocket science or medicine.
The other reason is that I want to, but not strongly enough to wrestle with the inherent limitations of Dokuwiki. Even with the RefNotes plugin, keeping track of sources and creating citations is a lot more difficult than is even reasonable.

The other reason I don’t see it as a big deal is that I use my own wiki to keep track of information for myself. Thus, it needs to be as reliable as I need it to be for my own purposes. If it were unreliable, I couldn’t use it.

The other other reason is because of the reasoning I laid out above. The lack of citations doesn’t mean it’s impossible to verify whether I’m right or wrong, it just means you don’t know exactly where I got the information. Which puts us in the same boat, because I often forget where I get my information as well.

That gets us into the topic of me wanting to cite stuff. As I stated above, Dokuwiki is not very pleasant for this kind of activity (and neither is something like Word, frankly), but the bigger issue for me is that I want to remember where I got information (see the 1st reason why they’re useful).
So I will at some point as part of my effort to also get good at research, but I make no guarantees.

That’s it for now. I may edit this further in the future.