Course:SOIL 550/Feb 4
Exercise: Evaluating Online Information
Feb. 4, 2016
Your Task:
Post links to two websites on this Wiki Page (below). You will have to log in with your CWL in order to edit the Wiki page or make any additions.
- One that you consider to be a credible source of information, and
- One that you do not consider to be credible.
In addition to the link, please provide (in 50 words or less) your name and your reasoning for why you chose these sites.
Suggestion: Consider a website that you may have come across when researching your Major Projects, or a past report or assignment. Try not to use a direct example from the peer-reviewed literature, but something that is more openly available.
Please post your examples and reasoning before midnight on Tuesday, February 2nd, so that they can be accessed and reviewed before class on Thursday. Some of these examples will be discussed in class.
Credible Examples
MLWS
http://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/home/?id=1395690825741 Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is run by the Government of Canada, can be more trusted as the information is reliable and confirmative assertions can be made based on it. The information is verified before being published (Posted by Adarshana Thapa).
http://faostat3.fao.org/home/E This link is the website of food and agriculture organization of the United Nations. I trust this website because this is supported by the statics division of United Nations. As we all know, United Nations is such a credible institution, therefore, I think the source will be pretty reliable (Posted by Hao Zheng).
http://www.avalanche.ca/ Avalanche Canada I trust this source based on their ongoing dedication to provide the public with valuable, often lifesaving scientific information pertaining to avalanche conditions in the mountains. Furthermore, these professionals and their friends/family rely on CAC reports, suggesting that they have many reasons to do their jobs well (Posted by Clemens Langemeyer).
https://www.chilliwack.com/main/home.cfm City of Chilliwack. This a website operated by the municipal department. Every Internet user is able to easily obtain much information, such as the latest news or events, in Chilliwack. The reason why this link is credible: 1. This website is operated by a credible institution; 2. Many reports from the website have specific authors, the audience is clear, the purpose is informative not biased, and the information is regularly updated (Posted by Eric Shi).
http://parkscanada.ca This is a government website and the content is highly regulated. The people who post on this website have had their work reviewed multiple times by different people (Posted by Roya Bennett).
http://climate.weather.gc.ca/ This is a federal government official website "Canada Climate", in which provides climate data collected by government of Canada. The data are all up to date, mostly continuous, and with specific description of each climate station. Such information is important for data research and analysis (Posted by Ellen Zhang).
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/earth-sciences/geography/topographic-information/free-data-geogratis/11042 Data on GeoGraits is released to public by Natural Resources Canadian(NRCan), a ministry of Canadian government responsible for forests, earth sciences and mapping. The released data is collected through standardized methods and is approved by recognized professionals (Posted by Rachel Wang).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Development This is an reputable international organization and therefore trust their information. The UN has over the years conducted research and published very reliable articles and journals. The organization is mainly made up of professionals who have their credibility to protect (Posted by Acheampong Baafi Alfred).
http://faostat3.fao.org/home/E The FAO is a reputable international organization which will only publish data or statistics after meticulous and methods and standard of data which they also publish with their statistics (Posted by Khadijah Tyrell).
http://www.un.org/climatechange/blog/2014/03/ipcc-report-severe-and-pervasive-impacts-of-climate-change-will-be-felt-everywhere/ The United Nations article " IPCC Report: severe and pervasive impacts of climate change will be felt everywhere" is an example of an article I would deem credible. The article points out some of the key findings of the IPCC report, which has a very stringent and transparent review process. The United Nations is recognized worldwide as a credible organization by scientists, academics and government institutions (Posted by Ashley Rose).
http://unfccc.int/science/items/6990.php This link is the publication page of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. I believe this site is credible, as it is an international environmental treaty that has been participated by members from different governments. Its publications and online information have been cited in the various peer-reviewed literature (Posted by Jenny Huang).
MFRE
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-debut-eng.html Data found on this website is provide directly from Canada government reporting (Posted by Zeng Zhu).
http://www.idealibrary.com/servlet/useragent?func=showHome This website contains tons of the periodical released from the world-famous publishers, from which the part of paper can be downloaded (Posted by Shirley Long).
http://www.e-stat.go.jp/SG1/estat/eStatTopPortalE.do E-stat is Official Statistics of Japan from Japanese government. This site provides general public data (Posted by Konami Aoyama).
http://catalogue.data.gov.bc.ca/dataset/coalfile-database DataBC is run by the Government of Canada, and it encompasses data from all government sectors (Posted by Fan Cheng).
http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/galactosemia. The link is from Genetics Home Reference website, a federal government site that is operated by U.S. National Library of Medicine. All the information provided in the site is quite recent, properly cited, and has been reviewed by the experts before it is posted to the site (Posted by Olivia Ciawan).
http://faostat3.fao.org/browse/Q/*/E It is an official website operated by governments (Posted by Vita Liu).
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=20072 Taken from a website operating under a government domain, this source is constantly up to date and has citations (although most of the in-article references are referencing sites on the same domain). A quick search on EIA also verifies their identity as a government run website (Posted by Kevin Elsaputra).
https://www.commerce.gov/economicindicators 1.This is the official website of U.S Department of Commerce. 2.The data are released on schedule (Posted by Lance He).
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$Department/deptdocs.nsf/all/bus14765 This information is from a government website and developed by experts who have experience in the area (Posted by Joel Bokenfohr).
http://www.tyson.com/ This is the website of the multinational corporation, Tyson Foods, Inc. Being a legitimate company, this website should be credible (Posted by Ricky Chang).
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome It is an U.S Government website which provides up to date information and reports for agriculture (Posted by Weijia Xie).
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$Department/deptdocs.nsf/all/bus14729 It's offered by government and written by two smartest and brilliant guys (Posted by Sean Bing).
http://www.fao.org/home/en/ lots of data about agriculture and environment are available on this website and you can get data from different countries and different years. On the other hand, there are many graphs are available and you can check the trend of recent years just by checking them (Posted by Yan Zhou).
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/start-debut-eng.html Statistics Canada. This is a government authorized website. The data are collected under rigorous regulations and federal responsibility. They are reliable in the sense that data are gathered through large poll of active surveys and country-wide census (Posted by Alina Chen).
Past example
Penn State Extension Services has an article that breaks down phosphorous dynamics and management considerations in a more accessible way than academic journals. There are no references but I'm inclined to treat this like a textbook. I believe that the source is credibility being formally affiliated with Penn State University....Maybe I'll be proved wrong?
Not Credible Examples
MLWS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture I consider Wikipedia not to be a credible source of information, as this mainly serves as the secondary/tertiary platform for any sort of information, anyone with the access to internet can edit it, contents can be posted by anyone and the expertise of the posters are not taken into consideration, increasing the chances of spreading of intentional/unintentional misinformation, though errors are fixed immediately some errors may remain unnoticed (Posted by Adarshana Thapa).
http://www.zhihu.com/question/20416619 This is a link from a Chinese website, discussing about genetic modified food. The reason I think this source is not credible is that the authors from this website are not professionals and they do not use references as well to support their ideas. Moreover, the author might have some personal bias in this article, which means that it is not fair. Therefore, this source might be not reliable (Posted by Hao Zheng).
http://www.foxnews.com/ Fox News A well known radical right-wing news source whose representatives oppose/condemn the views of featured academic/industry professionals as means of furthering their agenda (Posted by Clemens Langemeyer).
http://www.wri.org/blog/2015/12/learning-disaster-chennai-flood-offers-personal-lesson-climate-adaptation Learning from Disaster: Chennai Flood Offers a Personal Lesson for Climate Adaptation. This a blog post by Arivudai Nambi Appadurai on December 04, 2015, which represents a few personal opinions and suggestions of the author. The reason why this link is non-credible: 1. This article is without citations; 2. This article is from Blog posts, and the author is unreliable; 3. Personal bias may be involved in this article. 4. The website or author may not regularly update the article (Posted by Eric Shi).
http://animalmozo.com/ I found this while perusing Facebook for some random non-credible website. It took me 5 minutes to find this one. It uses catchy and exaggerated titles like "weirdest sea monsters found washed up on the beach." Every page has many advertisements, and every time you click on something a popup ad opens up (Posted by Roya Bennett).
http://www.worldtravelguide.net/canada/weather-climate-geography This website provides some brief information of the climate and geography of Canada. However, the main focus is to the tourists so it is more entertainment based information. Therefore, it is not credible as reference (Posted by Ellen Zhang).
http://baike.baidu.com/ It's a website similar to wiki, everyone has access to edit and sometimes the cite and source of information is not credible (Posted by Rachel Wang).
www.ghanaweb.com This is a general news website. Anyone can post just any one which might misinform people (Posted by Acheampong Baafi Alfred).
http://www.popsugar.com/fitness/Do-Think-Potatoes-Veggies-Starch-2775193 Reason: The article started with: "I just heard......" (Posted by Khadijah Tyrell).
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/the-paradoxical-origin-of-climate-alarmism.html The Climate Change Dispatch is a site that claims to provide the real facts behind climate change, arguing that there is no such thing as man made global warming. The article I posted entitled The Paradoxical Origin of Climate Change claims that the CO2 we put in the air is good for the planet and agriculture as a whole. I would never cite any of the information found in this website because it goes against the consensus of all credible peer reviewed scientific literature (Posted by Ashley Rose).
http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Markets/US-organic-food-market-to-grow-14-from-2013-18 This site is about organic food market trend in US, which I came across in previous assignment. I feel the information on this website is less credible. Although it provides supporting data, it is not peer-reviewed and lack of references allowing readers to further track the information (Posted by: Jenny Huang).
MFRE
https://www.reddit.com/ Online forum or discussion boards may provide new information as it readily becomes available but often not reliable. Anyone can add and remove (Posted by Zeng Zhu).
https://www.quandl.com/ (Posted by Shirley Long)
https://answers.yahoo.com Yahoo answer is not reliable source because anyone can answer without credible sources (Posted by Konami Aoyama).
http://www.mining.com/market-data/ Although this database is constantly up to date on a daily basis, most of the index don't have a clear citation or reference (Posted by Fan Cheng).
http://www.answers.com/topic/galactosemia The link is from a Q&A site that serves as an internet forum for people to exchange information casually. It is not reliable as information provided is not reviewed by expert and there is no credible citation one can refer to (Posted by Olivia Ciawan).
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AwrXnCZxpbFWnSIA2NNPmolQ;_ylu=X3oDMTByNWU4cGh1BGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?qid=20121112235443AAowcZI It's a Q&A page, informal. People just express their own ideas (Posted by Vita Liu).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Identification_Number Although the information on a site such as Wikipedia is at many times credible, sources such as these are not the most credible since their reliability hinges on the sources used to publish the information (even more unreliable when a Wikipedia page is lacking sources) and that they are vulnerable to editing by anyone (Posted by Kevin Elsaputra).
https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150609113251AAxH2dO Most answers on this website don't cite data sources (Posted by Lance He).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Alberta While much of the information on this website is credible, this website is open for editing and may not be accurate. Wikipedia is not a good source for information (Posted by Joel Bokenfohr).
http://www.nytimes.com/ Not 100% sure, but this one should not be credible because its commercial information (Posted by Ricky Chang).
http://247wallst.com/ It is a commercial blog and it has ads all over its website (Posted by Weijia Xie).
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Successful I don't believe it (Posted by Sean Bing).
www.yahoo.com If you search some contents of special area, this website might be unreliable. There are some advertisements and lots of materials are from people of different background who may not specialize about this topic (Posted by Yan Zhou).
http://abcnews.go.com ABC News Some of the news articles are coming up so quickly without much efforts put into validating the data source. News are mostly stories that people will search on to find additional information about a particular event (Posted by: Alina Chen).
Past example
Grist is a current events website which focuses on news and opinion pieces about climate change and environmental issues. Although I do enjoy the website for news, and trust that they are putting out good facts, I would never use it on its own as a credible source because they don't always provide any sources for their information or distinguish between opinion and fact. I would instead use it as a starting off point for more rigorous research.