Come on now.. be honest. It's not always provided. While sometimes it is there are many times where the answer is along the lines of - go look it up yourself - I don't have time to do your research for you - it's on the web or the one I love the most - Go back and look through my previous posts.
I believe it's important to provide research to help inform parents. Whenever I come across something I find in a research paper or article, I always try to provide the source to back up the claims.
Anyone that draws a conclusion without fully understanding is doing themselves and their children an injustice. I know you don't think that some people can't interpret the research properly but I also think you don't give folks enough credit. Much of the research papers I have read are in layman's terms that are not that difficult to understand. Parents opting for CI's for their children should have access to the research no matter if it's for or against CI's. They deserve to have access to as much information as possible and professional research should be a large part of that information. Personally I would take anything claimed from research as nothing more than an opinion unless there is a source to back it up.
Okay, lets be honest, rd. The fact of the matter is that I have emailed out research to any member of this forum that has requested it. It is not appropriate to post an entire 40 page article in this forum. There are restrictions on reprints and reproductions. I have access to research that other members have to pay for, if they can gain access at all. I have willingly and freely shared that research when it has been requested. I have offered to do the same for you, and you did not want to accept the offer.
And parents do have access to that research, the same as I, as a parent had access to that research. It may require some effort, but any parent that wants to locate it, can. I share research with those parents that request it, and many times, I send out a PM stating that I have access to an article that they may be interested in, and to let me know if they want it forwarded to them.
You provide abstracts the vast majority of the time. In fact, you said you could not get an article you provided an abstract for, and I offered to get it to you. You declined the offer.
And I don't have time to do your research for you. No one did mine for me. When a piece is readily accessible through the web, there is no reason that it should have to be spoon fed to anyone.
Research papers are not written in layman's terms. Articles are not necessarily research papers. Opinion papers are not research papers. Blogs from websites are not research paper.
And if you want to ask a question about something I have already provided an answer for, why should I do the search work for you? Why should I spend time repeating myself? You seem to be very good at asking questions, but very reluctant to search for the answers.
Yes, parents opting for CI, or opting not to implant, should review as much information as they possibly can. Its out there. All one has to do is look for it.
When you have been researching for 20 years, you accummulate quite a bit of knowledge that becomes synthesized. You learn the concepts, and you have read the research that supports it. It then becomes your knowledge. You are free to express it as such. The idea that 2 + 2=4 comes from research, too, but if you tell me its 4, I don't ask you to cite the textbook you learned it from, or the first grade teacher that taught you the concept, now do I? Its the same principle. You can choose to agree with or disagree with anything that I have to say. Frankly, it doesn't matter to me one way or the other. But if you dispute it, you have to prove me wrong. I am under no obligation to prove to you that I'm right. If you don't think there is research that supports what I say, then by all means, make the effort to prove that there is no research out there that supports it. If I saimply say, "research shows" I am under no obligation to cite which research and where. Only if I take a quote from a piece of research, or paraphrase the content of a specific document am I obligated to cite. And in those cases, I do. However, when I state that research shows, it is not necessary for me to cite the 200 articles I have read that cummulatively support the point.
