Any student who has had to write a research paper for school has been told that there are certain databases and websites that are more reliable than others. Galileo, JTOR and scholarly articles are among those reliable sources that teachers will often times suggest to students. So why is it that in the quest for knowledge we are told not to hold other websites accountable?
Anybody can set up their own website or post information to the web, take blogs like this one for example. There are innumerable websites floating around the internet and there is no “accuracy police” monitoring the authenticity of information posted. A misconception that many students may have is that if it’s on the internet and it looks reliable, it must be so. Perusing the website http://www.buydehydratedwater.com/, makes the invalidity of the web almost immediately apparent. At first glance, this website is advertising a brand of water that is cleansed in a new and more advanced fashion than yesterday’s water. The website even explains the vigorous 27-step process the water goes through to be purified. There are links to customer testimonials, job opportunities with the company, online shopping, and other interfaces forging this website’s credibility. However, upon further speculation, this website is obviously a hoax. If the words “dehydrated water”, which create an oxymoron within themselves, didn’t clue you into the joke, then the employee benefits might have. Some of the employee benefits include: complimentary twinkies, usage of customer’s credit cards, free transportation to work by mule, and straws from 7-Eleven. This is just one example of faulty information posted to the web. There are several others out there, most of which are not actually hoaxes like the one listed above, but just faulty information.
Wikipedia
One database that is notorious for holding unreliable information is wikipedia.com. The majority of teachers will not count wikipedia as an acceptable source of information for student’s research papers. The reason being is that anybody can post to or edit information on wikipedia. For example, somebody who knows absolutely nothing on Shakespeare could write his entire biography on wikipedia. In wikipedia’s defense, however, wikipedia has a team of volunteers who monitor information posted and correct counterfactual information as they find it.
As a teacher, I would not recommend my students utilizing wikipedia as a reliable source though as a student it has helped me several times. I would certainly recommend students use it to assist them in their research but would also suggest that they use other reliable sources to support what information they find on wikipedia.
