Collaboration in Research

I liked Dr. Burton's lecture about researching using people instead of just documents. I also liked his example about posting on google+ or facebook about a topic you're exciting about and then waiting to see the responses. Someone else mentioned that the way we post about research we're doing is important. They said when we show enthusiasm for what we're researching, others will become excited too and probably offer to help us more. Once I figure out exactly what I want to research in more depth, I will post on facebook and see what happens.

I've always done the google or wikipedia search to initially learn about a topic, then I've moved on to more scholarly sources to get more in depth. I've never tried researching through social media. I think researching using people comes back to the idea of collaboration, and that collectively people know more about a topic than an expert in the field. It's interesting that's once we've written something, we want feedback and others' opinions and help. But we do not seek the same help or feedback while we're researching and formulating our ideas. I wonder why that is. Perhaps it's just cultural. We view thinking of ideas and making connections between concepts for our own work as a solitary pursuit. But it makes sense that we would receive the same benefit from others reviewing our ideas and unfinished work than we would from others reviewing our finished written pieces. Collaboration is an opportunity for us to refine, reinvent, and reconsider our conclusions. This can lead to great progress and produce higher quality work.