A Primer on Actually Doing Your Own Research • Richard Carrier Blogs

Real "Doing Your Own Research" means being reasonably critical, looking for the best case on both sides of an issue, and comparing their merits by valid metrics—which means, not your emotions or biases or assumptions, but by their actual cited evidence and actually articulated logic. 

A real researcher seeks to be informed; to actually understand an issue. 

A real researcher traces claims to their primary source, and looks for any evidence against it of comparable quality before relying on it. A real researcher weighs sources by their objectively-evidenced track-record of factual reliability, and not by their politics or position. A real researcher is neither selectively gullible nor selectively skeptical. They apply the same standards—the same warrant for belief—in every direction. 

And that all means that a real researcher doubts their own beliefs and findings, until they can be sure. Before running off with a premise, they ask themselves, "Wait, is that true?" And they check first. Before running off with a conclusion, they ask themselves, "Wait, how would I know it if that conclusion were false?" And they check first. 

Please do all that. Otherwise, please don't "Do Your Own Research" at all. Because science has proved that that will guarantee your beliefs will be increasingly false, not increasingly correct. To reverse the polarity on that outcome, you have to do it right.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/32665