Fact vs

Fact vs. Opinion in Scientific

Reporting

Using CAUTION on the WWW

Surfing the web is like watching public access TV.

Some of the people who develop web pages are serious about their science, some are just having fun, some don't have their facts right, and others are looking for a forum for their opinions. The Web is not like a peer-reviewed journal where information is evaluated by knowledgeable respected scientists before it is printed. This is both good and bad. It means that new ideas can be shared very rapidly, but you must evaluate the validity of the information you find. For your research paper, you will be using good and bad sites. You need to know the difference.

The first resources you find are not always the best.

Different search engines use different criteria, but scientific validity is not one of them. Credible sites are not automatically listed first. It's like "AAA Used Cars" being listed first in the phone book. It doesn't mean a thing about the quality of the cars.

How you search will determine what you find.

Try "plague", "black death", and "communicable disease" to see what resources you find. See what you find using different key terms and different engines to get a look at how various engines search. You may find that you get better results on one engine because of the terms you choose. Make sure you limit your search be using specific terms. You have probably done this for English or computer class already. Try it to get scientific information. You will want to access scientific articles by going to professional journals or professional associations and searching their sites. I will give you some of these sites when we need them, and you will find others.

Scientific literature is based on a tradition of reporting in juried scientific journals.

Articles that reference Science, New England Journal of Medicine, the Communicable Disease Center, or World Health Organization may be more credible than those that use Mother Jones, Newsweek, or USA Today as their references. You may want to go to some of the primary resources mentioned if it is a popular magazine article, so that you remove some of the emotion or bias that you might find in a popular publication. Remember that the main goal of some publications is to sell more copies, not to just share information to advance scientific thinking. Look for an appeal to reason, not just to emotion.

These are questions you will want to answer about any site you use:

Who is responsible for this web site?

Why should I listen to them?

What is the emotional content?

What is the site agenda, other than providing information?

What "feelings" does the site give you?

What does the "name" say about the site?

How are you going to evaluate the web sites you visit in your research?

go to http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html for more information on evaluating websites.