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Be a Research Skeptic

A Crash Course in Source Evaluation

Using SIFT


Now that you know how to SIFT, it's time to put your skills to the test. For each of the sources below, determine which SIFT step(s) are a good fit. Are the sources reputable or are the claims true?

This article always reminds me to stop and reflect. I find the title judgemental, and it's important for me to recognize that reaction as I'm evaluating. So how do we do that with this source?

"A recent study" is mentioned, and helpfully linked, in the first line of this article. I would suggest following this link to the original information. The study is published by the Williams Law Institute. Then, we can investigate the source. Because this is an academic group, the + Wikipedia trick is our best bet. Doing so doesn't raise any immediate red flags for me. UCLA is is highly regarded University, and that affiliation reflects well on this source.

There are a few things we can do here. We can follow the "research" linked in the first sentence to trace this source's claims. Clicking this link takes me to a security warning, then to another write up that isn't the original, and finally to the original article This link opens in a new window.

BuzzFeed goes on to follow up with the researchers and some of their peers. If you're interested in this information, it makes sense to investigate the source. If you spent any time taking online personality quizzes in the 'aughts, you might be rightfully skeptical of BuzzFeed. However, using the Wikipedia Perennial sources list, the + Wikipedia trick, or the Media Bias Chart all show that BuzzFeed News is held in higher regard than most of the BuzzFeed site. This news outlet has won several journalism awards.

The headline of this article sounds pretty far fetched. Chances are, we just want to know if this really happened. Instead of investigating the source, let's just see if other outlets reported anything similar. What would you search to try to find out?

A quick search (I used mexican police slingshots) reveals the same basic facts reported on several websites, including The Guardian, a larger newspaper.

Tweet in Chinese characters with an image of mutated daisies.

Tweet suggests high levels of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear reactor accident have caused daises to mutate.

It really doesn't matter who tweeted this image with the claim about radiation mutation. They aren't a publisher we can readily research, and this kind of claim is often goes viral on social media, obscuring the origin.

Instead, we should find supporting evidence. You can either do a free web search for key terms (Fukushima Daisy Mutate) or use TinEye to reverse image search. Either way, you'll discover very quickly that this mutation is fairly common in daisies and is called fascination. It's not related to radiation.