Anybody can have a website, and if you create enough content, search engines will present you to the world as a leading voice in a field in which you’re a mere novice, or worse yet, a tourist. This is a problem.

Likewise, true experts can get buried. Sure, you have a PhD in your field, decades of experience, dozens of articles in peer reviewed journals, a couple books, and the respect and admiration of your colleagues, but how many Twitter followers do you have?

I’ve found a lot of misinformation online, some of it even dangerous, much of it from bloggers, many of whom make money from blogging. People tend to present themselves as experts, even when, maybe especially when, they are not. One of the truest marks of expertise is a realistic assessment of what you haven’t yet learned, while a beginner dips his toe in the water and fancies himself an oceanographer.

It feels good to think you know a lot about something. It feels good to think you’re helping people. I don’t believe many people are deliberately spreading bad information and getting paid for it, but that doesn’t change the end result — an Internet that is supposed to make us smarter, and instead does quite the opposite.

So I want to make a few things clear: I’m a good researcher, but I’m fairly new to a lot of the subject matter on this site. The reason I’m here is to cast a wide net by publishing what I’m working on, and hopefully connect with some people who share my interests. I want to be very careful to not present myself as an authoritative figure, and I want to ask forgiveness in advance if I get something badly wrong. As a lifelong learner, being wrong from time to time is part of the deal.

The most important thing I learned in school wasn’t math or science or English; it was critical thinking, and unfortunately, it seems that schools don’t teach it much anymore. I urge anyone reading this site to muster all of your critical thinking skills and apply them to what you read. I don’t necessarily need an email from you every time you disagree with me, but you shouldn’t assume that I know what I’m talking about simply because I have a website. Millions of idiots have websites, and I could easily be one of them. Reader beware.