Stop/Pause
Remember that the web is constantly changing, so what you see on a search results page or on a website may be slightly different from what we (librarians Andrea and Dan) saw when we created this tutorial.
We’ll use SIFT (Four Moves) to evaluate a source. Go to the webpage ”38 Children Recovered in 20 Months with MMS.” Please note that the link we are using goes to an archived version of this website that was saved by the Wayback Machine, which is run by the Internet Archive, a reputable non-profit digital library. The original website's URL is http://www.autismone.org/content/38-children-recovered-20-months-mms, which is no longer available. The fact that a webpage becomes unavailable at a later date is not necessarily an indication of how reputable it is. Please evaluate this site as if it were still live.
1. Stop. Pause and ask yourself about the source (for example, its context and reputation, which may be evident through things like the author/creator, the hosting website or organization).
This page describes a presentation given at the AutismOne Conference. We don’t immediately know anything about the conference or its reputation. We do know that the causes of autism have been heavily debated by groups who oppose vaccinations and that the wide consensus in the medical professions is that vaccinations do not cause autism and are essential to preventing the spread of life-threatening illnesses. Early scientific research that suggested a link between vaccinations and autism has since been found to be highly flawed, and the general scientific consensus is that there is no link. However, many groups still believe vaccinations are a cause of autism.
Given that this source is on a topic that is contentious among some groups, we may need to evaluate this source more carefully. Who is the author/creator? What is their level of knowledge/expertise on this topic? Is the source based on rigorous scientific research? We’ll want to keep such questions in mind as we apply SIFT (Four Moves).
CC-BY-NC-SA
This guide was created by Andrea Baer and Dan Kipnis at Rowan University and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-SA).