Questions to Ask

Ask yourself some of these questions:

• Is this page mostly fact or mostly opinion?
• Does the author attempt to over-generalize or simplify information to detract from the facts?
• Do any of the facts appear out of context? Are they applied in a way to persuade you?
• Are there links to the organization sponsoring the page? Or, does this seem like a lone person trying to voice his/her opinion?
• Is the page actually an advertisement disguised as information?
• Do you see research methods or other evidence that support the conclusions?
• Is there a bibliography/reference list that reflects quality sources?
• Do you see errors in facts, grammar, spelling?

Did you do a quick background check of the author? (Just type the author’s name in a search engine and see what you find.)

Did you see what other sites link to this site? (Go to Google and type link:URL -- no spaces. For example -- link:http://library.uhh.hawaii.edu/)

Check these two websites for factual information:

http://www.dhmo.org/

http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/