Table of contents
Information is constantly all around us and it is not so easy to know which source to trust. The ability to assess the veracity of information is an important skill to have on a daily basis. In this article you will find out how to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Check the professionalism of the writing
Generally speaking, the more time and money that is invested in producing a piece of work, the more reliable the information that you will find there is likely to be. A website, for example, that is considered an official source, but is sloppy or poorly done, will not present you with serious information. Instead, focus on publicly available finishes and high quality websites. However, this does not necessarily mean that well-crafted information is credible. Well-designed website templates are readily available at low cost today.
Research the author
A source will be more reliable if it comes from someone with the right qualifications and credentials in the field you are interested in. If no author or reputable association is mentioned in a source, it should not be considered truly reliable. However, you should focus more on the merits of the author's ideas than on their credentials if they are proposing original work. Degrees or qualifications do not guarantee anything and history has shown that great innovations tend to come from people with little reputation.
Consider the date
Find out when the source was made public or reviewed. In scientific fields, for example, it is important to deal with current sources. But in other fields, such as anthropology, it is essential that the documentation is older. It is also possible that you are looking at an older version of your source and that a much newer one is published in the meantime. Check this by using, for example, an online library to see if there is a more recent version of your source. In this case you will not only have to find it, but also make sure that it is reliable.