Can someone please recommend a good book, website or similar resource that teaches how to evaluate the credibility of an information source?
I just learned that a friend of mine is becoming interested in a lot of nutrition and health-related nonsense that he is reading on the Internet and watching on YouTube. I won't go into details, but it's obvious crap: health claims for all sorts of unproven, unlikely and possibly dangerous diets, backed up by nothing more than individual testimonials and pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo.
I could take on these claims one by one and (I think) easily rip them apart, but what concerns me more is that this person seems to have absolutely no idea how to judge the reliability and validity of information that he stumbles across on the Internet. He really is just a sheep waiting to be sheared. Even more worrying is that he may be intending to inflict this stuff on his young children.
I think I've always known intuitively what to look for (avoidance of hyperbole, quality citations, proven track record, funding sources, self-interest/conflicts of interest, endorsement from authoritative organizations, etc.), but I've never read or seen anything putting it all together in a teachable format. Can someone suggest something that will explain in detail just what to look for in an information source?
I just learned that a friend of mine is becoming interested in a lot of nutrition and health-related nonsense that he is reading on the Internet and watching on YouTube. I won't go into details, but it's obvious crap: health claims for all sorts of unproven, unlikely and possibly dangerous diets, backed up by nothing more than individual testimonials and pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo.
I could take on these claims one by one and (I think) easily rip them apart, but what concerns me more is that this person seems to have absolutely no idea how to judge the reliability and validity of information that he stumbles across on the Internet. He really is just a sheep waiting to be sheared. Even more worrying is that he may be intending to inflict this stuff on his young children.
I think I've always known intuitively what to look for (avoidance of hyperbole, quality citations, proven track record, funding sources, self-interest/conflicts of interest, endorsement from authoritative organizations, etc.), but I've never read or seen anything putting it all together in a teachable format. Can someone suggest something that will explain in detail just what to look for in an information source?
