ShmoopTube

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How to Know If a Source is Reliable, a la Shmoop. [Football hits man in head]

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Meet Maria. She’s always cutting corners.

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When she encounters a young man selling supposedly brand-name purses out of the trunk of his [Maria meetings car salesman]

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car, she thinks she’s found the best deal ever…

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…until, that is, Maria discovers the Burberry handbag she covets is actually made by Barberry... [Maria holding burberry hand bag]

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…in China…

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…out of plastic. While anyone with half a brain should know [Butterfly flys out of Maria's head]

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that a designer clutch for sale at a street vendor isn’t the real thing…

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…even the savviest writers sometimes have difficulty discerning whether a source is [Girl thinking about writing]

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reliable…

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…or super shady. So, how do we tell good sources from bad?

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Well, first off, did we pull our source off the Internet? While websites can provide us [Farenheit 451 typed into shmoople search engine]

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with all sorts of marvelous information…

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…and cat pictures…

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…the Internet is also rife with gossip and outright lies, which is why we have to be

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very, very careful when using online sources. If we’re pulling content from the official [Cat laughing from a laptop]

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webpages of the White House, Walmart, or a reputable newspaper like The New York Times…

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…then the information we’re using is probably safe, given that it’s been uploaded with

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the full weight of the U.S. government… [Congress building lands inside US mail box]

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…the Walton family…

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…and the liberal media machine behind it. Wikipedia, however, does not make the cut

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as a reliable source. Anyone…

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…absolutely anyone…

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…can log on to Wikipedia and edit articles. Random blog posts with anonymous authors also [Laptop opens and cat laughs]

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don’t constitute reliable sources. This brings us to our next criteria for determining

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reliability. Whether the source we’re interested in is a book, a piece in an academic journal, [Book lands on tablet and smashes screen]

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or an article taken off the Internet, we have to ask: Who’s the author?

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The author of a reliable source will be respected in his or her field of study…

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…and will cite his or her sources so we can fact-check to our heart’s content.

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For example, if we’re writing an essay about President William Howard Taft and his enormous [Pencil writing an essay]

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bathtub…

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…we should look for source materials written by noted historians…

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…Taft’s family, friends, and other contemporaries…

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…or maybe even by President Taft himself. We also need to know when a source was written [Pencil hits Taft and page turns]

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in order to decide whether it’s reliable or not.

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Say we’re writing a paper about yellow fever. While medical texts hailing from the era of

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the building of the Panama Canal might be interesting… [Fly buzzing past people]

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…a source penned more than one hundred years ago doesn’t tell us much about where yellow

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fever is prevalent today, or why… [Man sprays pest spray at fly]

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…and what people can do to protect themselves from bleeding all over the furniture.

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In other words, a reliable source is appropriate to the topic and the time we’re writing

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about. Here’s another criteria for determining

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the reliability of a source: What’s the author’s purpose? [Man puts fork into socket and electrocutes himself]

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While some authors set out to provide an objective look at a topic…

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…others will have an agenda, because they have very strong feelings about the subject…

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…or perhaps because their research was sponsored by an organization with a particular outlook. [Man on a ship smiles and sparkles from teeth]

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It’s our job when searching for sources to identify where the author is coming from,

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why, and if their viewpoint is reliable enough to include in our own work.

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For example, say we’re writing a paper on pesticide use in the United States. [Pest crawling on a leaf]

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We find an article written by a biologist who claims that a particular pesticide used

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on corn doesn’t negatively affect human health…

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…even though a dozen other biologists in a dozen other academic papers have come to [People giving thumbs down]

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the opposite conclusion.

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Given how very different Biologist A’s stance is on our pesticide from the rest of the scientific

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community, it’s of the utmost importance that we determine whether he’s a reliable

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source or not.

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In this case, a quick search determines that Biologist A’s study was sponsored by the

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company that manufactures the pesticide. [Pest spray and pest appear on study findings]

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Sorry, Biologist A, but we vote you off the island.

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We’ve discussed how reliable sources will have authors who know what they’re talking

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about…

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…and who are willing to put their names on their work.

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Reliable sources will be relevant to our topic… [Darts land into topic targets]

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…and will have citations that allow us to check the source’s veracity.

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While we can look online for reliable sources, we know to be cautious about what we find

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on the Internet. One last question: Why does it matter whether

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we use reliable sources or not?

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Whether we’re producing a paper for school or for an employer… [Woman at work typing on laptop]

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…we’re putting our names to something. We’re saying that what we’ve written can

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be relied on.

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When our own reputations are on the line with our peers, our teachers, or our employers,

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we must take the extra time… [Clock rings]

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…and really, it isn’t much…

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…to make sure that the information we use to back our opinions

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is good. Otherwise, we’ll look like idiots. [Woman wearing a dunce hat]

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