You can't believe everything you read for several reasons:
One way to make sure the information you're looking at is reliable is to figure out who created it, and where did it come from. This chart shows us visually that peer-reviewed or scholarly works are the 'tip top' most reliable, credible sources to use for our research. Instructors will often specifically ask that you use peer-reviewed sources.
The three types of periodicals are scholarly (also referred to as academic or peer-reviewed journals), trade publications, and popular publications. The chart below discusses the key differences between each type to help researchers understand when it might be appropriate to utilize them.
Visually, scholarly journals are plain, with few or no pictures, a simple color palette, and are generally heftier than trade or popular publications. As mentioned in the chart, academic articles are often lengthy, meaning a journal with only ten articles could be over one hundred pages whereas a trade publication from that field may only be fifty or fewer pages long. The images you see in a peer-reviewed journal are most likely charts, tables, graphic representations of data, or images of field work directly related to the topic of the article. Scholarly articles do not contain advertisements.
Trade and popular publications are often bright and colorful, with eye-catching covers featuring exciting color schemes and various text sizes. Both may contain advertisements.
Google is familiar to us, easy to use, and has been a more than adequate resource for all of your day-to-day curiosities and needs....so why isn't it also the best choice when sitting down to research your topic?
A molecule of water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom
>>We know this is a fact because we could open any chemistry textbook and confirm it, or if we asked around, we would receive the same answer from almost everyone (not everyone remembers high school chemistry!). If you can only find 'proof' of something in one location -- one news site, blog, talk show, podcast -- it is much more likely to be misinformation or opinion
>>Facts are also significantly less likely to use colorful language that express emotion
Cats are much better than dogs
>>This statement isn't confirmable, because everyone I ask will have a different opinion, and no two information resources will give the same response either
>>Instead of simply stating something, there is biased, subjective language: "much better". What makes one pet "much better" than another? What is "much better" to one person might be a nightmare to another, making this statement unconfirmable
>>This statement also contains cultural bias: This statement assumes a culture where animals are brought into our homes and treated as part of our family. The concept of keeping pets is not universal, so this statement cannot be universally true
Not all sources can be trusted to deliver information without bias.
According to Merriam Webster Dictionary Online, bias is:
a tendency to believe that some people, ideas, etc., are better than others that usually results in treating some people unfairly
In news media (podcasts, blogs, news shows on TV or streaming, articles, etc) is most often biased in a particular political direction. This means that the information can be worded to create a desired response from the audience, key contextual information can be left out of coverage, content may be presented by hosts showing intense emotion or with evocative visuals/audio, or resource creators may present their opinions or the opinions of political candidates as facts.
How can you tell if you can trust a news source?