How to View a Source

Rules of Thumb:

Every source is suspect. No source will ever be completely factually correct no matter who its author. A great deal of skepticism is needed when analyzing and evaluating new information.

What is the publishing history of the author of the source?

What is the motive to release or publish this source?

What platform is this source on?

Are the sources named or unnamed? What does the bibliography look like?

Can I corroborate this source with knowledge I already know?

What kinds of cognitive biases do I need to be aware to not bias my views and understanding of this information? The big one is confirmation bias, but there is a whole chart of various behavioral biases.

General Daily News

These are the types of questions needed when evaluating new information. The reason being is there is a whole lot of misinformation or biased information that can predispose you to think and make judgements based off faulty info. The most widespread and difficult is deciphering political news. I find understanding US political news to be the biggest test to see if you are able to accurately convey the facts of the day to someone else. The US media is atrocious at accurately conveying daily information without taking into account its readership’s own bent that it caters to (profit is a lucrative thing). As a reader you have your own personal views on the matter but this needs to be thrown out to understand the important relevant facts. Try not to interpret the ramifications of the news before having a general understanding. What is often lost is asking someone else their own views on the daily events. You need to be afraid of your own microcosm no matter how careful you might think you are and branch out. Treat the other person’s interpretation as a suspect source even if the person is your friend. Also understand that not many people treat daily news like this and will have a certain bent to their interpretation. This is not a problem. What is a problem is when someone else’s interpretation of events discounts key facts and details to support their own viewpoint. I find it best to detach reproach in this scenarios because this one person can be a tiny sample size for a large demographic’s feelings. It is also important to note what is the ‘popular interpretation of events’ because this can ignore pertinent facts to the story. This is very apparent with news that tugs at the feelings of the reader and when it can manipulate your emotions.

Academic Sourcing

First understand the author’s history. If someone has been publishing on the same topic for a long time or if this is their first significant work after their Phd.

This is a personal belief of mine and only for general pursuit of knowledge but can be applied elsewhere if your so inclined. The best way to understand an academic’s bent is to look at their dissertation.

1. This is often where you will find the most original and untainted by academia politics and publishing politics.
2. It’s like your favorite artists, first album. Before the record company has their say, creatively the dissertation is generally much more original of a research goal. Around 5 years has been spent producing the manuscript and is possibly the reason they are pursuing a life in academia.
3. When looking at an older more questionable researcher, try and figure out if they’ve changed topics, views, or beliefs on a subject. Their freshman effort tells a lot about the person and shows their formative years.

Where is the researcher publishing?

This question is very important but when just starting out you aren’t sure where the pockets of tension in a certain field are. Certain methodological approaches will be favored by one subdiscipline over another. Understand the publisher’s goals as well. This can get very tricky to decipher through because while by and large you might say everything from this journal is suspect because of the editing committee that’s on it, but a younger researcher who needs to publish their work might submit an article for a review. So try and understand the biases of a specific field that you’re operating in and be open to all reseach.

Read a biased article

1. This is good practice.

2. It’s good to be up to date on the bad research in your field. It keeps you aware of whatever myths you might need to dispel for a general audience.

3. There still might be good research in your article regardless of the bias.

READ THE BIBLIOGRAPHY NOTES

This is the most important thing to do as an academic. The author is constructing their argument by building a pyramid or by playing Jenga. When outside a field look at the cite metic score to see if its higher than normal or not. This gives a measurable statistic for the types of sources used in the paper. When you’re already familiar with the particular discipline then this is extremely extremely important.

The best thing to be on the lookout for is to ask the question.

Why did the author forget to use this source? This is the most telling aspect of an argument in my opinion. Willfully omitting important information is more than negligence it is a an intended choice by the author to skew the article and justify their position.

The one caveat would be if that they might not be aware of a particular source.

Then you can get into how they used their sources and if even that has a particular bent.

*These are just quick hits and thoughts and reflections on sourcing. And is off-the-cuff if you will. This might be updated at a later date.