Some claim that there is no hope of doing perfect research. Well what foolery!

Diction is an important component of all good writing. The words a writer uses not only set the tone (archaic, slangy, colloquial, formal, idiomatic, legalistic, bureaucratic, etc.) of a composition, they set the level of precision of the writer's thinking. Since language is the medium of human thought, imprecise diction is often a sign of imprecise thinking and renders any claims made by the writer suspect.

When someone asks whether perfect research is possible, the person being asked is placed in a quandary. Research is delimited by tasks. Some are simple; others are not. If a seeker wants to know how to replace the heating element in an electric oven, just reading the directions printed in the user manual will usually yield the required information. The research is perfect; it is faultless. But if a diplomat wants to know how to eliminate the dangers of nuclear weapons, no amount of research is likely to provide an answer. Research can, at best, provide only different levels of achievement. Just as a writer can select different words or phrases for different contexts, a researcher can attain only different levels of success for different tasks.

Reading the advice given by those selling research papers is scary. Look at this paragraph:

People who are іn thеir academic career, usually requires a research оn thе assignment provided by thеir schools / universіties. Sometime throughout thе college careers, most students face thе challenges оf wrіtіng a research paper. Even thе prоfessiоnals / wоrkіng people thеy also require a research fоr preparіng thеir presentаtiоn оr gаthеrіng іnfоrmаtiоn from othеr sources. I love doіng research; I іnvolve myself іn thе thеme, іt helps me tо understаnd thе tоpic mоre easily. You have tо bе cautious wіth thе research you are doіng. Іt should bе understаndable by thе reader. My research tоols sometimes іncludes some search engіnes, thеy are thе lіfesavers. Thеre Іs Nо Hope оf Doіng Perfect Research Yes, I agree.

Would you trust this person's research? Not I! Note the bad grammar and syntax and that the paragraph comes from a site named cheathouse. Indeed!

Or again, consider this paragraph from another source:

Developing a virtuous research paper question is the most important aspect that is to be initiated in the preliminary or planning stage of the research paper, the research paper questions are to be derived even before the finalization of the ‘Topic’ of Research writing assignment because the topic will be chosen based on the final and chief question(s). Essaycapital.com provides its essay writers with specialized training that helps them comprehend with the research paper requirements in an enhanced manner. The research question is the most crucial part of a qualitative research paper as the whole paper is bound to revolve around the particular question or a set of inter-linked questions. The perfect research question should never be too broad, that is, the question should only focus on a sub detail of the major issue. At we will provide you with an example to show you how to create a good research question.

The style of this paragraph is bureaucratic. Would you buy a research paper from essaycapital? Not I!

And finally, consider this excerpt:

Research paper writing has a specific focus and should not be confused with essays or thesis writing. A research paper is not designed to offer new evidence or report on developing work but as a collation and presentation of existing work. The research is to uncover existing knowledge of a topic and synthesize a focused and coherent report on this subject. A research paper is not intended to prove a hypothetical point but to present an existing fact. There are three directions you can take in designing your research paper. A simple analytical approach discusses the major points of your subject, evaluates them each in turn and then concludes with an evaluation of the research to the reader. An expository research paper does not so much offer altering viewpoints on your topic as it seeks to inform and explain what the subject matter is. A much more involved research paper is the argumentative form. In this type of research paper you pick a point of view and present your research findings to prove your opening statements."

Unfortunately, how the author of this sagacious wisdom distinguishes between "essays or thesis writing" and "the argumentative form" is a mystery.

In summation, consider this passage from James Lester's Writing Research Papers:

Why write a research paper? The answer is twofold. First, you add new information to your personal storehouse of knowledge by collecting and investigating facts and opinions about a limited topic from various sources. Second, you add to the knowledge of others by effectively communicating the results of your research in the form of a wel1-reasoned answer to a scholarly problem or question. . . . Any adequate research assignment . . . ask[s] you to inform, interest, and, in some cases, persuade the reader. You must be able to judge critically the merit of the evidence which you have compiled . . . and then be able to express precisely demonstrable conclusions about it. Such a task requires concentration and, more importantly, demands an imaginative molding of your material. . . . [Y]ou might attempt to compile a paper by paraphrasing a few authorities and by inserting quotations abundantly. But such a compilation would prove seriously inadequate since it would merely be presenting commonplace facts and opinions . . . [Y]ou would have offered a recital of investigations without the personal expression and explanation that is the ultimate purpose of all research. . . . (Lester, James D. Writing Research Papers, 2nd Edition. Glenview, IL. Scott, Foresman and Company, 1976.)

So, is there hope of doing perfect research? Of course there is—sometimes! It all depends on the whether—whether the subject is limited and whether the researcher can write and is intelligent enough to adequately evaluate the evidence. Unfortunately, many sites on the Web are peddling research but are selling Polish sausage. Not a pretty picture.

Hens that lay cracked eggs can't fix them.

Adam Smith in Book V, Chapter II, Part II of the Wealth of Nations has an interesting discussion on taxation in which he traces money back to its original sources to show who really pays. He shows that the real payer and the nominal payer are often not the same. The interesting thing about these passages is that the method can be used in all sorts of ways that have nothing to do with taxation.

For instance, consider what you really pay for when you purchase something. You pay for the product, of course, but you also pay for a lot more. You are led to believe, for example, that there is something called "free" television, television whose programming is paid for by advertisers. But where do the advertisers get the money they spend on advertising? It comes from the people who buy their products. Consumers are the ones who really pay for this "free" television, not the companies doing the advertising. The viewers of "free" television who buy the products advertised are paying for the programming, and the programming is not free. What's worse, even if you don't want to watch the ads you've paid for, you have to.

But advertising is not the worst example. The buyers of products also pay for the political ads companies run in support of candidates. Those buyers may not want to support those candidates, and the candidates supported by companies may not even have the interests of consumers at heart.

Companies also "donate" funds to candidates and spend huge amounts lobbying elected officials for favorable legislation. These companies get the money they spend on these activities from the people who buy their products too. So consumers, even when they don't support these politicians, end up paying for their campaigns. And when companies spend money lobbying the Congress to keep it from enacting effective consumer protective and other worthwhile legislation, consumers are paying for the lobbying that is not in their interest. Many believe that corporate America has corrupted the electoral process by buying politicians in these ways. If that's true, corporate America is using your money to do the corrupting. People, you're paying for your own nooses.

Nearly 80 percent of Americans say they can't trust Washington and they have little faith that the massive federal bureaucracy can solve the nation's ills. "This anti-government feeling has driven the tea party movement. . . . 'The government's been lying to people for years. Politicians make promises to get elected, and when they get elected, they don't follow through. . . . It was a problem before Obama, but he's certainly not helping fix it.'"

Many say they want a smaller government. But why does anyone believe a smaller government will help? Suppose you knew someone who fancied her/himself to be an excellent pizza chef but made pizzas that were so bad, people gagged when trying to eat them. Would the pizzas be any better if the chef made them smaller?

When the big government you disapprove of starts cutting programs, it may not cut the ones you want cut. If government can't be trusted now, why would you trust it to make the right cuts? What you might end up with could be worse than what you have. The point is that bad government can't be fixed by making it smaller. The only real fix is making government good, by making it a government of the people, by the people, and FOR the people.

So here's some advice for the Tea Party: One, stop complaining about the taxes you pay and start complaining—no, raise hell!—about the taxes the rich don't pay. Two, stop complaining about high prices and start complaining about corporate America's spending the money gotten by those prices to influence government. Three, stop complaining about politicians who lie and can't be trusted and start voting them out of office—Republican, Democratic, whatever. Start a campaign to oust all incumbents whether you like the one who represents you or not. The Congress won't pay any attention until the people demonstrate who the Congress really works for, and there's no way to do that without sweeping the whole house clean. When politicians attend your rallies and tell you how much they agree with you, remember that politicians lie to get elected. Show your representatives that the money that's yours that corporations spend to influence congressmen and get them elected won't do them any good. And finally, stop bringing up old, trite, and tiresome claims that have been heard for a least a century. They didn't work then and they won't work now. Try something new like, "Vote the rascals out—every last one!" That will get their attention. Nothing will change until WE the people change the way government works.

Have you ever though about the meaning of the word, "insurgent"? Calling the people in Afghanistan who are attacking U.S. and NATO troops insurgents has become common. "Insurge" means to rush or surge in, but the Taliban didn't rush into Afghanistan; they are natives who have always lived there. It was American and NATO troops who surged into Afghanistan; in Iraq, Americans even called one such going in "a surge."

And what about "intelligence" as in intelligence agency? Properly speaking, intelligence is a attribute of human beings. As such, organizations cannot be intelligent. Intelligence is distinguished from intellect by being applied to concrete or individual exhibitions of the powers ascribed to the intellect. People are animals endowed with intellect, not intelligence; intelligence refers to the extent to which a person is able to use his intellect. An organization cannot use its intellect, because it has none.

America has a vast "intelligence" conglomerate of organizations. The NSA, CIA, FBI, various branches of the military have "intelligence" groups, and other agencies, too, are involved in so called intelligence. This conglomerate is likely the largest the world has ever known, and its costs are huge, the total cost of which is a deeply held secret. It has vast technical apparatuses used to watch people, see what they do, hear what they say, read what they write. And yet, all of the money spent, all of the people employed, all of the apparatuses used are insufficient. These agencies have shown, over and over again, that they rarely learn what they seek.

The information gathered is derived from many sources. Much is speculative, some is contradictory. It often amounts to little more than hunches. Some is correct, much is not.

In Afghanistan, NATO and US forces grossly underestimated the Taliban's capacity to mount a vicious counteroffensive. No one predicted the use of suicide bombings. In Somalia, the U.S. backed warlords that had ruled Mogadishu for two decades were suddenly overthrown by a bunch of lightly armed mullahs called the Islamic Courts Union. Few in the State Department seemed to have heard of this grassroots movement before it took over the country. The United States also failed to predict that Uzbekistan would close down the American base that had been there since 2001, downgrade relations with Washington and tilt decisively toward China and Russia. After the Palestinian elections, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stammered that the victory of Hamas came as a complete surprise to her. The mother of all intelligence failures, of course, was the CIA's inaccurate prediction that Saddam Hussein's regime would be found to have weapons of mass destruction. One of the main charges against the CIA and FBI post-9/11 is that they failed to join up the dots beforehand. The killings at Ft. Hood resulted from an intelligence failure. The FBI had information about Hasan's extremism, but didn't investigate enough. Intelligence agencies apparently cannot make connections between bits of information to make a coherent whole. But who can blame them. Bits of information scattered here and there can be likened to needles in multiple haystacks. Too much information is as impossible to deal with as none.

So what’s wrong with this picture:

1. The United States of America, in all likelihood, has the largest and most expensive intelligence gathering service the world has ever known. We can assume it operates everywhere, even Timbuktu.
2. The United States of America tortures prisoners to acquire intelligence.

If the huge intelligence gathering service works effectively, why is the torture necessary? And if torture is necessary, doesn't it mean that the huge intelligence gathering service doesn't work? One or the other has to be unnecessary. Which one?

People who believe, as our leaders seem to, that both are necessary are involved in contradictory thinking which distorts every rational thought process. Is it any wonder that American policies are ineffective? Only insane people think this way! Intelligence gathering does not produce intelligence. As the results mentioned above show, only ignorance is produced. Given all the means 21^st century snoops have for gathering information, why do they have to resort to medieval methods? The only possible answer is that the practices employed by the agencies don't work. But history has shown that torture doesn't either. The Grand Masters of the Inquisition immolated many who were completely innocent.

When a nation as powerful as the United States goes to war on the basis of bad information, where does that leave the world? “We have squandered thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, we have projected force without intelligence—and that is folly. . . . That is how nations fall and that is how nations lose power.”

This story was printed in the NY Times. What's wrong with it?

Larry Langford, the former mayor of Birmingham, Ala., was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined $360,000 by a federal judge after his conviction on bribery charges. Mr. Langford was convicted of multiple counts of bribery after a federal jury found that he had accepted more than $230,000 in cash, expensive clothing and jewelry as chairman of the Jefferson County Commission in exchange for steering $7.1 million in county bond business to a prominent investment banker named Bill Blount. Blount and a lobbyist, Al LaPierre, were sentenced to four years and four months and four years in prison, respectively. Some residents expressed sympathy on Friday for the former mayor’s predicament. At a barbershop in a predominantly black neighborhood where the owner had hung a sign in the window reading, “We Support Our Mayor,” Charles Hicks said he was disappointed by Mr. Langford’s recent behavior but believed the former mayor was well-intentioned and was corrupted by wealthy businessmen.

Journalists were once taught to give the who, what, when, where, and why. All people want to know this basic information no matter what the subject. Writing teachers often tell students that they need to answer all the questions readers might ask. Every story may not have a who, what, when, where, and why, if it does, they need to be included.

So, Langford, the former mayor of Birmingham, Ala., was sentenced to 15 years in prison; Blount and LaPierre got about four. Langford was fined $360,000. Were Blount and LaPierre fined? Don't know. Langford was convicted of accepting more than (how much more than?) $230,000 in cash, expensive clothing and jewelry. Blount sold the county $7.1 million in bonds. What were Blount's commissions on this sale? Don't know. And did LaPierre get paid too? Don't know. If he did, how much did he get? Don't know. And who was the judge? Don't know.

Why is knowing any of this important? Well, what if Blount took home a cool million or more in commissions and wasn't fined? Langford took home $230,000 and was fined $360,000. Wouldn't that make you wonder about the fairness of this trial? And if so, wouldn't you like to know the name of the judge? Were the residents of Birmingham right who believed the former mayor was corrupted by wealthy businessmen? Did the judge aid and abet political corruption by issuing the heavier sentence and a fine greater than the accepted bribe on the corrupted official and issuing the lighter sentence and no fine on the corrupting businessmen? How many people would be quite willing to spend four years in prison if they could pocket a million?

When the legal system is unfair, justice is undone, and corruption is promoted. Is this why political corruption is so prevalent?

Mainstream American journalism has been subjected to the severest criticism by the American public. For instance, one recently posted piece states that there are five reasons that the mainstream media is worthless.

1. Self-Censorship by Journalists

As former Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin wrote in 2006: "Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. . . ." "If mainstream-media political journalists don’t start calling bullshit more often, then we do risk losing our primacy— if not to the comedians then to the bloggers."

2. Censorship by Higher-Ups

The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, Seymour Hersh, said: "All of the institutions we thought would protect us -- particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress. . . . The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that's the most glaring. . . ."

3. Drumming Up Support for War

Bill Moyers criticized the corporate media for parroting the obviously false link between 9/11 and Iraq (and the false claims that Iraq possessed WMDs) which the administration made in the run up to the Iraq war, and concluded that the false information was not challenged because: "the [mainstream] media had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked."

4. Access

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post . . . offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to "those powerful few": Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and—at first—even the paper’s own reporters and editors. . . . The offer—which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters. . . .

5. Censorship by the Government

Finally . . . the government has exerted tremendous pressure on the media to report things a certain way. Indeed, at times the government has thrown media owners and reporters in jail if they've been too critical. The media companies have felt great pressure from the government to kill any real questioning. . . . Dan Rather said, regarding American media, "What you have is a miniature version of what you have in totalitarian states".

To be sure, all of these criticisms are quite valid, but there are two more.

The mainstream media is not today and never has been exclusively devoted to "news." Newspapers have always been a hodgepodge of news, sports, opinion, entertainment, health, gossip, human interest, do-it-yourself, and even puzzles. When news went video, all of these were carried over. The evening news is not about "news"! And the temporal constraints of television news reduce reporting to nothing more than a series of sound bites.

Finally, there's just plain bad reporting as exemplified by the story that begins this piece.

No, not all the news that's fit to print by any means. Not at the NY Times or anywhere else.

In Mesquite, TX, a four-year-old boy was sent to in-school suspension because the length of his hair was below his collar and his ears. The school questioned whether he should be allowed to attend preschool with other children, because the school district has a rule requiring the length of boy's hair to be above the collar and ears. Many consider this rule to be absurd, asking what has a student's hair got to do with his education? The school board justifies the rule by saying that boys' hair can be a disruptive influence in the classroom, but many doubt that four-year olds pay much attention to the hair-lengths of their playmates.

A New York City fourth-grader was sent to the principal's office and nearly suspended for bringing a two-inch plastic toy machine gun to school. The school district has a no tolerance policy on guns, even toy guns because they can be mistaken for real ones. The school's actions were subjected to ridicule, because no one could ever mistake a two-inch toy gun for a real one.

In Seattle, a fifteen-year-old girl was accused of brutally beating another young girl in a bus tunnel as security guards stood by and did nothing. The company employing the guards says they acted properly, because they had been given a rule to follow which states that they were to merely "observe and report" incidents. Citizens of Seattle and elsewhere who saw a video of the beating were outraged.

A few miles past Sharon Springs , KS,  a wheel bearing on a train carrying coal became overheated and melted, letting a metal support drop down and grind on the rail, creating white hot molten metal droppings. The crew noticed smoke and immediately stopped the train in compliance with the rules. But the train was over a wooden bridge with creosote ties and trusses. The crew asked higher-ups to allow them to move the train but were instructed not to. "The Rules" prohibit moving the train when a part is defective! The bridge caught fire and burned down.

Rules, again and again, produce results that strike most people as wickedly unfair, unjust, and plainly stupid.

These four incidents—many more could be cited—raise a longstanding issue in jurisprudence—should legal systems be based on rules or principles?

The debate on this issue is extensive and confusing. Rules and principles, it is claimed, are not easily distinguishable. The Golden Rule, for example, is really a principle and not a rule at all. So is the Hippocratic Oath. Principles, it is claimed, are often ambiguous. When a physician, for example, is asked to swear that s/he will "prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone," how is someone supposed to interpret "for the good of" and "never do harm"? Some claim that rules, because they can be stated more precisely are better. But are they? Are the three rules involved in the examples above better? The people who reacted adversely to these situations don't think so.

Under the new federal tobacco law, cigarette companies will no longer be allowed to use words like "light" or "mild" on packages to imply that some cigarettes are safer than others. So, "tobacco companies plan to honor the letter of the law—but to shade the truth." They plan to use light-colored packaging for light cigarettes. So Marlboro Lights will be renamed Marlboro Gold and be packaged in a gold-colored box and Marlboro Ultra Lights will be named Marlboro Silver and be packaged in a silver-colored box. I suppose that if there were a brand named Marlboro Heavy, it would be packaged in a box colored lead grey.

Rules can be as troubling, perhaps more troubling, than principles. First, once someone knows what the rule is, an easy way to avoid obeying it can often be found. Many legal firms build their entire practices on teaching companies how to do just that. Second, no rules-writing body, such as a legislature, can possibly anticipate all of the ways in which a rule can be circumvented which gives rise to what are normally called loopholes. Loopholes are nothing but ways to break the law without breaking it. Rules based systems often merely provide people with ways to legally break the law, destroying the law's effectiveness.

Companies use rules in this way all the time. A company can market a harmful product and claim that it did nothing illegal, arguing that the product conformed to all the required safety regulations. In fact, there are even absurd examples. Some decades ago in Germany, a fast food hamburger chain was sued for having sold hamburgers made with spoiled meat. The company was acquitted when it proved that there was no meat in its hamburgers. That hundreds of people were sickened made no difference.

Often overlooked is a distinction between rules and principles that is rather obvious. Rules can be arbitrary; genuine principles cannot. For instance, in some countries, motor vehicles are driven on the road's right side, in others, on the left side. Each rule regulates traffic successfully. A country's choice of which rule to adopt is entirely arbitrary. A principle, on the other hand, must have some logical or moral foundation, it must embody a sense of rightness. For example, a person's privacy shall not be violated can function as a principle, because privacy by definition means "the quality or state of being apart from company or observation." So even secretly  observing a person in private is an intrusion that renders the situation no longer private. Privacy is not privacy when it is intruded upon. To secretly watch a person in his own private circumstances lacks a sense of rightness; it just seems wrong; it is a logical contradiction.

The rules exemplified in the examples above lack this sense of rightness. Invoking them gives rise to the feeling that a wrong has been done. So what the controversy over rules and principles based legal systems really comes down to then is the legal system's goal. Is its goal to enact rules that authorities want people to obey or is it to outlaw wrongdoing? If it is the former, the law can be used by authorities and governments to make people conform, it is the way autocrats govern, and it is used for other malevolent purposes.

When school-district authorities, for instance, impose rules that have no direct educational purpose on students, they are imposing conformity, not educating, even if the rules are justified as necessary for some other purpose such as orderliness or security. But conformity and freedom are not compatible concepts.

Governments do the same thing. Conformity can be imposed and freedom extinguished by the enactment of rules that are seemingly justified by appeals to orderliness or security. Many believe that this is happening in America today. Are Americans giving up their long cherished freedoms for the sake of security? If so, the rules-based legal system is what provides the government with the means for doing so.

Moral decisions are, of course, often difficult to make, especially if one thinks in terms of one or another of the established moral doctrines. But principles based on logic or morality are not hard to write. All that is required is to ask the person proposing a principle to provide its logical or moral justification, to prove that the suggested principle is not merely an arbitrary rule. 

Legal systems based on rules have sadly led to the disintegration of the old-fashioned common, non-legal idea of “justice.” Rules-based systems turn people into sheep and make it possible for people to live without having to make moral choices. The majority of people pay little attention to how and why rules are made. They do not ask, they scarcely seem to care, which rules are good and which are bad, which are a help and which a nuisance, which are useful to society and which are not. Perhaps most people prefer that, but if so, any hope of ever alleviating the human condition must be abandoned, since sheep are easily led to the sheering.