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Imagine that you are writing a paper. You find an interesting claim (a fact or assertion) on the Web. Before you insert this claim into your paper, you need to evaluate how credible its source is. Can you trust the web site to get it right?
This guide will help. Use it like a checklist. Start on this page, then visit the other tabs in order:
Each tab has two parts.
Continue below.
To answer many questions, we simply need to make observations and use common sense.
But for other questions, even in our personal lives, we need to trust the knowledge of other people.
For academic questions, we have to rely on experts for facts and for interpretation of the facts.
Whenever we cite claims made by others, we need to consider the credibility of these sources.
A credible source is one that has a high probability of making true claims.
To test the credibility of a claim made by a source, consider the following questions:
A) The Claim:
Do you understand the claim? Is it plausible on its face? Is it relevant to your argument?
B) The Authority of the source:
Are the authors in a good position to know the truth of the claim? Do they have relevant expertise? Have they studied the relevant data?
C) The Bias of the source:
Okay, so the authors may be experts, but can we trust them to give us the straight story? Could the authors' bias have distorted the truth in this document? Could they have misled us, consciously or unconsciously?
D) The Publication type of the source:
Does the publishing process for this source "build-in" some quality control? Does it increase our trust?
Go to the next tab: The Claim.