Prejudice (Positive!) as a Danger to Research

        How often have you heard students say, or said yourself, "I need to get some information to back up this point I'm trying to make in my paper"?  To academic writers, that does not mean the same thing it means to writers in high school or amateurs in the adult world.  It fairly screams "I have a prejudgment that I made without knowing the facts and now I hope to find just enough information to persuade my readers to fall for it rather than actually looking at all the evidence to see whether a pattern exists."  That's called "prejudice," though it's a positive prejudice in favor of one's hunches rather than a negative one against some person or group.  Researchers have to work very hard to avoid it.  See the email excerpt below (2/9/07) for an example:

A linguistics teacher: "This semester I have a wonderful 219 and . . .  2 independent studies, one of which is with a 104 student from the fall. He & I are working on a paper on passives in History texts and The History Channel. We've just begun, but I'm hoping something he can publish (or at least present) will come from it."

Arnie:  "The independent on passives in historiography sounds neat.  Am I right in suspecting that's how they invoke the mythical sense of historical inevitability and the historian's transcendent authority to declare it?"
 
A linguistics teacher: "I imagine, though that's the sort of speculation we linguists try to keep to a minimum. We more want to know if the pattern exists. :)"