University of Brighton professor Tara Brabazon claims that students have grown too accustomed to taking “the easy option when asked to do research.” The easy options being the popular Web reference Wikipedia and that quaint, mischievous little search engine known as Google. And she has now supposedly disallowed any students currently partaking in her course(s) from using any of the two utilities.

A number of specialists in certain fields of study – be it history, literature, science, etc. – see the open source landscape of the Web and are frightened. They see chaos. They see so many variables, and so many loose ends, that it appears unsafe to them. So they revert to the trusted resources of years past and completely discount anything new and “officially unapproved.”