Using and Evaluating Sources

Misinformation is everywhere. Wholly or partially fabricated stories are shared endlessly on social media and are sometimes picked up by news outlets. Anybody can post anything they want on social media or create websites for any purpose, sometimes completely disregarding reality.

Scholarly and scientific research is not immune. There has been an increase in research misconduct in recent years, ranging from massaging experimental data so the experiments appear to work out better to the complete fabrication of entire experiments and research programs.

One of the worst situations you can be in as a professional is to present work that depends on faked or fraudulent information that you assumed to be legitimate, but your boss, your client, or your investors know to be untrue. Basing your research on misinformation is at best a waste of your time--at worst, it can directly endanger the lives of any human subjects participating in your research. This can damage your reputation and your company’s reputation sometimes for years to come. Yet it’s easy to prevent this from happening simply by evaluating or fact-checking your sources.

Fact checking is the process of verifying any information you find, especially when you’re using a source you haven’t used before or that you’re uncertain of. Misinformation is becoming increasingly common and some research areas like climate change or genetic engineering have become highly politicized, leading to wild claims and counterclaims. Even some apparent academic websites or peer reviewed publications or conferences can be of poor quality of completely fraudulent. Some studies have estimated that in the STEM fields up to half of all so-called peer-reviewed publications actually have little or no peer review or other quality control and publish poorly performed or even totally fraudulent research. These publications are usually referred to as “predatory journals” or “predatory publishers.”

List of resources to help you evaluate information you find online.

Flawed or fraudulent research papers are far more difficult to identify. But there are steps you can take to avoid many of them.

1. Search reputable research databases. Reputable research databases evaluate the sources of the research papers they index and only allow papers from the sources that pass their criteria. This will weed out papers published by questionable journals and conferences as well as unpublished or self published research
2. Search only known archives, preprint servers, or repositories.
3. If you are not familiar with a journal or publisher, ask your colleagues about them or Google them to find out more

You can also check the resources listed below