Any person or group advising you to blindly take the word of the established "professionals" and "experts" instead of looking into matters for yourself is not your friend.

The WAPO headline reads, "Doing your own research is a good way to end up being wrong."

The article looked into a research paper published by affiliates of the University of Central Florida, New York University and Stanford.

The study concluded that when individuals look further into "false news articles," they are actually more likely to end up believing them.

Of course, the paper doesn't entertain the potential that people who did the extra work found good reasons to believe in the alleged "false news" stories.

It also turns out some of the news items labeled "false or misleading" by the researchers were in fact accurate.

One article used in the study as an alleged example of a fake news story was a 2020 Infowars report about Australian bushfires.

Listed as the ninth headline used in the study, the Infowars article titled, "Nearly 200 People Arrested Across Australia For Deliberately Starting Bushfires," was labeled "False/Misleading" by the researchers.