The internet can change a person's opinion from having none to having a wrong one.
Internet folklore. Its use is as a caution about the marginal value of research: moving from no opinion to a confident wrong opinion is a decline, and it feels like progress.
In practice
- A patient with no view on a treatment reads for an evening and arrives at the consultation certain about a study retracted in 2016.
- A manager with no opinion on a vendor spends two hours online and returns with a firm preference assembled from four reviews and a competitor's marketing.