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Be a Research Skeptic

A Crash Course in Source Evaluation

Find Supporting Evidence

When we find other evidence, we set aside the source we're evaluating. Instead, we consider and confirm the details it reports. It is possible for a generally unsuitable publisher to share correct information. When finding supporting evidence might be helpful, we ask:

  • Can you find this claim repeated elsewhere?
  • Is this claim a consensus, or an outlier?

How you go about finding supporting evidence will depend on the kind of source you're considering. If the original source looks like a news article on the free web, it makes sense to use your search engine of choice. If you're skeptical of the findings of a scholarly article, it makes sense to do additional searches in library databases.

Consider this source

Consider the article title "Drunk Driver Tries To Light His Cigarette With His Burning Car"​ by the Daily Caller. You can use the link below to visit the article if you like. Find supporting evidence. When you're ready, expand the panel below to see my thoughts.

I want to see if other outlets have reported on the same event. I don't want to copy and paste the exact title of the article. Instead, I identify the keywords. In this case: Drunk driver, cigarette, burning car. We can do a search for those keywords in your search engine of choice.

Doing this search shows us that many news outlets have reported on this story. Sometimes, news outlets will reprint stories written by journalists in other places. The papers may or may not independently fact check the stories they reprint. It's worth taking a look to see if this is the same story reprinted, or independent stories about the same event. I can see both in my search results. Still, it doesn't take long to find a more detailed article that verifies the basic facts of this story.