Have you tried to find an answer on the Internet? That is perhaps a dumb question. The real question is, is the information you find good information, reliable information? How do you know what is credible and what isn’t? Even the good intentioned aren’t always accurate sources. Hopefully, you don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. (Except for what I write, of course…)
But with the rush to the Internet instead of to the library to do research these days, the issue needs to be considered. Young people especially tend to ignore the library and focus on googling the Internet, and I confess I have done the same when I could not get to the library. But, depending on the relative importance of information accuracy, this may not be the best thing to do.
An excellent article, “Evaluating Credibility of Information on the Internet”, by Ronald B. Standler, gives some good suggestions to those doing general research. I will not belabor the points he makes about trusting what you read.
An experience I had today, though, highlighted for me the importance of validating information that is of importance. I was researching the small town of Pratt, Kansas, about 70 or 80 miles west of Wichita, population a little over 6000, with regard to a possible move. I was using Neighboroo, a very interesting Web site that gathers information on life, people, housing, environment, and real estate development for American cities. For example, 
“Environment” considers the level of crime, the likelihood of natural disasters such as tornados and hurricanes, weather, air and water quality, even the number of physicians per capita.
This last one caught my attention, particularly since my family has health issues. Neighboroo said Pratt had 1.2 physicians per 1000 people; not a very high number, and not very comforting if you had a medical condition that required a specialist’s care, since the doctors there would more likely be family practice.
If I accepted what I read without question, I would quickly rule out the town as a possible place to move. However, I had earlier been on the Pratt Web site, where it described the Pratt Regional Medical Center, which serves south central Kansas with a full range of medical services and is in fact the largest employer in Pratt, employing 400 people.
Why was Neighboroo wrong? The age of their information? The method they used to gather their information? Who knows? Using Google Maps, I was able to find at least 12 physicians in Pratt, not counting other medical offices where the individual physician was not identified.
The point is, the importance of accuracy on this subject was high for me. I have a family, and I am in the older end of the Baby Boom generation, so health would be of importance to me. If I were 25, single, and in good health, the number of doctors per 1000 likely would not be worth deep investigation.
It would be very time-consuming to verify every possible piece of information in Neighboroo’s Pratt description. (And if I were to contact Neighboroo about this, they would likely quite freely admit that they could not vouch for the absolute accuracy or currency of every piece of their information, for very valid reasons.) Multiply this by the number of cities and towns in the US, and the task of verification becomes nearly impossible.
But if the accuracy of a particular piece of Internet information is really important, try to verify it. Try to find more than one witness to testify on the subject (Google is helpful to find them). Use “official” sites, where possible; if you do that, you likely can easily contact directly the human source of the information if there are questions. And try to get the original source of a fact; Wikipedia and a blog or article quoting or referencing Wikipedia count as only one source. (You can sometimes tell this is happening if the article uses the same phraseology or the same extremely precise number as the original Wikipedia article.)
Don’t hesitate to go to the library. Most of them have computers too, these days, so you can enhance your Internet research with the book and magazine resources of the library (or, if you are older, the other way around).
Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Don’t be gullible. Don’t take their word for it.
Contributed by: Curtis Barron (Computer Programmer Analyst)
January 19th, 2007 at 1:17 am
You’re moving to Kansas? wow.
I do think people blindly accept information from the internet as fact. I think their acceptance has more to do with the graphical appearance and general popularity of the site rather than any sort of analysis of the source or subject matter.
At the top of my list of how to verify something from the web:
1. Corroborate the material. Who else is referencing it.
2. What’s the motive of the publisher. Every article has editorial qualities to it. What does the author gain by publishing his ‘truth’.
3. What does the author believe on the subject and how does that differ from the crowd?
4. Is the author the creator of the information or a collator of said information.
5. Is the site an interpretation of data or actual data.
I took a look at that search and was surprised that it doesn’t make a claim as to the source of their information. They differ it to an estimation based of their “trend assessment technology”. I really would prefer a source. Census data, a phone book, google, or if they actually collated the data themselves, maybe they could say that.
It’s a good looking site but doesn’t seem to convey any relevant information in a manner that is actually useful to a consumer. I’m following it though, it’s still in Beta testing.