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Neither research nor opinions are exempt from analysis.

The willingness to accept feedback advances skills, learning, and knowledge.

The words “in my opinion” may encourage conversations. It also signals openness.

The history of intellectual and social progress is, in many respects, a combined personal and collective journey of thoughts, beliefs, and actions, marked by questioning and challenges. Over the years, this ongoing quest for improvement has involved a mix of successes and mistakes. This consistent personal and social movement has shaped and advanced skills, learning, knowledge, and social circumstances.

However, even with this in place, these discussions were sometimes supported and sometimes opposed. And yet, these different points of view (occasionally, but not always) led to the realization that what had previously been accepted as true was, in fact, not true, thereby leading to a new belief. The crucial point to note here is that universal truths—whether discovered or not—exist, are absolute, and immutable, whereas "personal truths" are not.

Personal truths are opinions. Self-evidently, opinions have a place, and they may create opportunities for ideas to be exchanged and challenged. However, when the term “my personal truth” is applied to an opinion, it negatively affects the social dynamics of the situation (Boghossian, 2007; Habermas, 1990; Kant, 1781/1998; Korsgaard, 1996; Kuhn, 1999; Longino, 2020; Popper, 1963).

In social dynamics, the phrase “This is my personal truth” has become a modern barrier to questioning and challenges. The utterance “This is my personal truth” can be presented as if it confers “some kind of ‘special immunity’ from challenge,” as though the words “This is my personal truth” somehow elevate a personal belief beyond that of an opinion and beyond being challenged.

From a universal standpoint, an opinion—no matter how sincerely held—is never exempt from analysis. Likewise, any research‑based idea or claim is not immune from scrutiny. All points of view, whether academically supported or not, remain subject to ongoing consideration, questions, examination, and challenges.

Research across psychology and philosophy has long shown that refusing to allow beliefs to be questioned, which includes the process of feedback, undermines the very method that produced the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason (Ellis, 2001; Ellis & Dryden, 1997; Glasser, 1998, 2000; Habermas, 1990; Kunda, 1990; Pronin et al.,........

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