Another thing about those critical thinking skills. What about the critical thinkers themselves? Researchers with an independent streak are often contrarian and distrustful by nature. They need to prove out someone else’s conclusion through their own discovery and vetting process.
Searching Out Loud strengthens their research mettle. It offers a transparent, dispassionate and empirical way to test those conclusions with the models and frameworks laid out in the book’s many use cases.
Models such as the Vectors of Integrity, Provider Source Conjugation, and the Johari Window enable readers to test and ascribe motives to the actions of their search targets, whether based on a desired outcome or pushed by events beyond their control.
These perspective-taking formulas resonate with the intuitions of the hardened skeptic: The person who needs to “take it all in” and return a report free of outside influences. They enable readers to see outside official statements, in-between the absence of compromising details, or right through the self-serving arguments of targeted subjects, their social circles, and professional affiliations.
The multiple perspectives move readers beyond the simple confirmation to matters of perception. That’s because these level-setting tools capture the distortions and contradictions inherent in the vested interests and blindspots of both our search targets and the path laid out by our sources.
Other frameworks can be applied for pattern matching or analyzing larger data sets. For example, content analysis metrics like the Biggest Picture are reliable benchmarks for measuring media coverage around motivation-triggering events. The Biggest Picture connects private actions to public outcomes on both core and related topics.
No doubt some of the frameworks laid out in the book are practices the reader may have already considered or even adopted. The book lays out the sound investigative principles, project management work flows, and presentation methods that document the discovery process and anchor the conclusions we draw from it.
