1.4 Evaluating and Citing Sources
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Understand how to identify appropriate credible sources of information when researching a topic.
- Differentiate between primary and secondary sources.
- Differentiate betwwen popular and scholarly sources.
- Evaluate sources of information for their strengths and weaknesses using the CRAAP test.
- Differentiate between pseudoscience or junk “bad” science and real science.
- Describe the dangers of “bad” science.
Using Credible Sources
Since this is a biology class, we will be focusing on questions that can be answered scientifically. Remember that in the scientific process, observations lead to questions. A scientific question is one that can be answered by using the process of science (testing hypotheses, making observations about the natural world, designing experiments).
Sometimes you will directly make observations yourself about the natural world that lead you to ask scientific questions; other times you might hear or read something that leads you to ask a question. Regardless of how you make your initial observation, you will want to do research about your topic before you start setting up an experiment. When you’re learning about a topic, it’s important to use credible sources of information.
Types of Sources
Whether conducting research in the social sciences, humanities (especially history), arts, or natural sciences, the ability to distinguish between primary and secondary source material is essential. Basically, this distinction illustrates the degree to which the author of a piece is removed from the actual event being described. This means whether the author is reporting information first hand (or is first to record these immediately following an event), or conveying the experiences and opinions of others—that is, second hand. In biology, the distinction would be between the person (or people) who conducted the research and someone who didn’t actually do the research, but is merely reporting on it.
Primary sources
These are contemporary accounts of an event, written by someone who experienced or witnessed the event in question. In general, these original documents (i.e., they are not about another document or account) are often diaries, letters, memoirs, journals, speeches, manuscripts, interviews, photographs, audio or video recordings, or original literary or theatrical works.
In science, a “primary source” or the “primary literature” refers to the original publication of a scientist’s new data, results, and conclusions. These articles are written for other experts in a specific scientific field.
You’ve probably done a writing assignment or other project during which you have participated in a peer review process. During this process, your project was critiqued and evaluated by people of similar competence to yourself (your peers). This gave you feedback on which to improve your work. Scientific articles typically go through a p