Earlier in my career of teaching critical thinking (CT), I would advise students to "do their research." I typically meant this in two ways. First, as these were often psychology students in a traditional university, chances were that they would actually, at some stage soon, conduct their own research – likely as part of an undergraduate project and, perhaps thereafter, a master’s or PhD level dissertation, or even a post-doctoral project. In addition to theory and history, we were teaching our students how to conduct research – correctly. So, my recommendation wasn’t a stretch. This is what we expected of them.

There are varying degrees of the extent to which research can be conducted. As in the case of our students, one can conduct actual research through collecting data, analysing it, and maybe even getting it published through the peer-review process (i.e., primary research). You could also read and review, say, 30 peer-reviewed journal articles on a topic and report back findings (such as through secondary research). Of course, some might just simply refer to the latter as a review of the research, as opposed to actual research, which is fair to an extent, I suppose; but what makes it stand out as a kind of "cut-off" for what constitutes research is that it requires a certain level of know-how with respect to conducting a literature review. Simply, there are right and wrong ways of doing it, and so, not just anyone can do it.

Be that as it may, anything less than a secondary........

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