Reflections on the impact of the WEB on History of Science works: “Fake Data”, Transparency and Subjectivity

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.22533/at.ed.5584192406069

• Palavras-chave: History of Science, WEB, Fake Data, Fake News, Transparency.

• Keywords: History of Science, WEB, Fake Data, Fake News, Transparency.

• Abstract:

   The creation of the WEB, one of the most popular services on the Internet, generated a revolution in communications as impactful as Gutenberg's movable type machine. Technological advances over the last 50 years have made global communications almost face-to-face. The presence of the WEB was felt in all areas of human knowledge, especially in Education and Science, offering support for the development of new projects. The objective of this text is to reflect on how the characteristics of the WEB impact the performance of intellectual work, in this case the creation of an article on a topic in the History of Science. Based on the authors' personal experience in the area, the stages of the process of preparing an article were examined. It was found that searching for references via the WEB can flood the historian of science with references that are not relevant to the objective of the work – we call it “Excess”. Suggestions are presented to make the process of separating “Excess” from significant references more effective. We also address the influence of “Fake Data”, “Transparency” and “Narrative” in choosing the characteristics of the type of audience to whom the work is aimed. We concluded that a good choice of references is fundamental, but the big problem is that there is no criterion for valuing references.