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Marc Pugliese - Theology and Religion LibGuide: Verifying Information

Saint Leo University Professor, Marc A. Pugliese, has a LibGuide to assiss in theology and religion research and resources at Saint Leo University's Cannon Memorial Library

Can you trust information on the Internet?

Verifying and Evaluating Online Sources

Can you trust the Internet? There's a lot of unreliable information on the Internet. There's also a lot of really solid, accurate information too.

How can you tell the difference? Caveat lector: Let the reader beware. To publish a factual book an author is often required by the publisher to be considered an "expert" in their field. The author will often request the help of other individuals who give feedback on his or her work. This includes other experts in the field as well as the editors from the publishing company.

On the internet, there is no such filter to guarantee that what is published is reliable, accurate or current.

It's your responsibility. Your reputation as a student or professional can be at stake. If your doctor told you that he or she is prescribing a drug based on advice by an unlicensed pharmacist who was self-taught, would you have that prescription filled?

Make sure your source deserves your trust. Always have a backup. Double-check every fact with a second source. If your source doesn't feel reliable, don't use that source.

How can you decide? There are 4 general questions you should ask about any web site:

  • Who is the author of the Web Page?
  • Is the information in the Web Page Accurate?
  • Is the Information Objective?
  • Is the Information Current?

Learn More

Who is the Author?

Anyone can put up a webpage.
Any person can be giving an opinion, which is not a statement of facts. Ideology, or someone's beliefs, can be a driving factor in putting up a webpage. If one’s ideas are out of the mainstream of society, the internet has become a good place to air these opinions.

Look for the author’s name, for whom they work, and what makes them knowledgeable about the subject.

What makes the author credible? What are the qualifications of the author? Sometimes the author may be qualified in a different area of expertise than the one he/she is writing about – check that the “expert' has training or education in that subject area.

  • Is the author the creator of the information?
  • Can the author be reached for questions or comments?
  • Does the author list more than an email as a point of contact?

Author/Advertiser Bias
Are there political or ideological biases? The Internet has become a prime marketing and advertising tool.

What motivation does the author have for placing this information on the web? Frequently the answer is that the information is placed to advertise a product or support a particular point of view.

 

Propaganda & Misinformation

  • What constitutes a good fake is how well it resembles the real thing**  Information should always be accurate and either free of bias or making note of its own bias. Information also needs to be useful for a given purpose to have value.

 

Misinformation
Misinformation always refers to something which is not true.
One of the most popular forms of misinformation on the Internet, especially email, is the passing along of urban legends. Urban legends are fabricated or untrue stories that are passed along by sincere people who believe them...and feel the need to inform" others.

Example:
“Have you heard the one about med school students stealing organs?**http://www.snopes.com/ (urban legends).

Accuracy & Honesty

Check for Accuracy 

  • Can you find another (preferably print) resource on that subject?
  • Are facts and figures given a source, and can you locate that source to check the author’s statements?
  • Is it a blog?

Examples
AT&T has determined that identity theft is the number one white collar crime in America today (no citation/author given).

The U.S. General Accounting Office has reported that identity theft reporting has increased from 35,235 in 1992 to 522,922 in 1997 (U.S. General Accounting Office, www.gao.gov "Identity Fraud," Report No. GGD-98-100BR, 1998, p. 40].


Is the information Objective?

  • Is the information Objective?
  • Is the information fair, moderate, and consistent?
  • Does the author present both sides of an issue?
  • Does the author have an agenda, or use meta (key) words in the webpage's or blog's heading or body so that search engines will return them as a hit more often than would be normally warranted?
  • Does the writing style appear to be trying to persuade the audience about an issue or a product?
  • How thorough is the coverage compared to other sources?

Is the Information Current?

  • In printed documents, the date of publication is the first indicator of currency. If you want current information on cancer research you aren’t interested in something published in the 1970s
  • The webpage includes a publication date or a "last updated" date
  • If no date is given in an electronic document, you can view the directory and read the date of latest modification

The document refers to clearly dated information

Example
"Based on 2000 US Census data, the average household income rose 10% over the last decade."

Other Verification Strategies
Keep in mind search engines are now using “pay per click' revenue generation

  • Check the domain name
  • Beware the ~ tilde
  • Use the "who is" lookup

Pay Per Click
Many search engines are now trying to generate income from content. People can pay a premium to have their website listed whenever someone does a search for certain keywords.

The website author picks the keywords, bids as much as they think it should cost to win the top slot, and then pays by the click. “With cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad, regardless of how many times it's shown. (source: http://www.google.com date: 4/10/05)

“Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines are a highly effective way to attract cheap, targeted traffic to your website. PPC advertising works on a bid for position basis. The more you bid, the higher your site will appear in the search engine's results. And you only pay when a visitor "clicks" to go to your site.' (source: JRL enterprises http://www.jrlenterprises.com/pay-per-click-advertising.htm date: 4/12/05)

Check the Domain Name
When the Internet was "born" people got together and gave it some structure and rules. One of the rules is about the domain names.

  • .edu = educational institutions
  • .gov = U.S. government sites
  • .com and .net = commercial sites (and some nonprofits)
  • .org = non profits organizations

If it comes from a .com or .net site it may have bias or profit in mind, not just information. This does not mean that other sites are free of bias; just that this is something you need to keep in mind. What is the purpose and the agenda of the person or organization that developed the site?

The ~Tilde
If you find a website with a tilde ~ in the web address, the person who created that page is not the owner of the website
The ~ tilde is very commonly found on student pages, departmental pages for reports, or on other nonpermanent/transient files.

"Who is" Lookup
http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois

This service will give you the name, address and phone number of the person (or office) who is responsible for that domain name (and the Web site)

If you feel that you need more information concerning their resources or documentation, you can contact them. For example, if you looked up http://www.saintleo.edu your results would include:

Domain Name: SAINTLEO.EDU
Registrant: Saint Leo College
PO Box 6665
Computer Center MC-2066
Saint Leo, FL 33574
UNITED STATES