Once upon a time research was easy. A visit to the local library to browse as many specialist titles as available, plus a quick skim of the Britannica article(s) in their reference section, was as good as any non-academic could achieve. Missing the latest research? Blame the library. Used the wrong equation? Blame the publisher. As soon as you walked out, notes under arm, your job was done.
Not any more.
Book publishing is static, reliable, mostly safe. Errors in print are permanent, so some effort is made to avoid them. Web publishing, as exemplified by Wikipedia, is a now thing, as reliable as the latest editor's opinion. Errors are corrected and made with equal rapidity. Expert opinion (costing money) has been supplanted by a perverse form of intellectual democracy (costing merely time). Research today is no longer the gathering of scarce facts and the quoting of authority but a frantic filtering of abundant ever-changing data and the blind hope that the quoted links stay both live and valid.
Was the old way better? Not at all; but it was clear when an adequate effort had been made.
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