Re: Finding information on the Internet

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

On 04/08/2003 05:37 AM, Richard L Bowman wrote:
> One site that I have found useful for guiding students in how to evaluate
> effective web sites is the tutorial written by the UC-Berkeley Library.
>   http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html

I must object to that guide.

In a list of five criteria, only in the fifth does
it call for the evaluator to ask "Does it all add up?"
One would have hoped that finding sensible content
would be the primary, indeed predominant criterion.

The fourth criterion asks "What do others say?" but
to paraphrase Feynman, what do you care what other
people say?  Why can't you think for yourself?

The third criterion is OK.  Sources must be cited.
Otherwise it's plagiarism, which is abominable even
if the information _per se_ is accurate.

The first and second criteria are basically instructions
on how to judge a book by its cover.

It asks "what type of domain does it come from?"

First of all, that is objectionable in principle.
A scientific fact is factual independent of who
says it.  If some geocities web-page says that the
sun rises in the east, it doesn't make it any less
true.

Secondly, that is too vague to be useful.  Are .gov
domains supposed to be more trustworthy than .com
domains?  If you think so, for homework please
examine
  http://www.google.com/search?q=homeopathy+site%3A.gov
and decide whether what you find is scientific and
trustworthy.

===========

To repeat:  I find most (not all) of these criteria
to be crutches for intellectual cripples, for people
who can't think for themselves.

It is a disservice to students to teach them to rely
on such crutches.

For further discussion of why it is important to judge
documents by their contents, not their covers, please
see:
 "Judging Books by their Covers", a chapter in
 _Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!_
 excerpted at
  http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm