RELIABILITY OF INTERNET ITEMS (WEB SITES) WHEN
A
STUDENT WRITES POLITICAL-SCIENCE PAPERS
By
Barry D. Friedman
Introduction: Peer Review and
Primary Sources
PEER-REVIEWED SOURCES
The faculty’s inclination is to recommend to
students that you rely chiefly on peer-reviewed literature when you conduct
political-science research that will result in research papers.
The traditional format of such literature is books and journal articles.
The essence of peer review is that the editor receives manuscripts from
authors who would like to see them in print.
The editor refers those manuscripts to, usually, two or three scholars in
the respective discipline (field of study) who will be referees.
The job of the referee is to compare the content of the manuscript with
other research in the field, to evaluate whether there is consistency between
the manuscript and such other research (i.e., the manuscript references the
other research and uses it as the basis for the author’s exploration, discovery,
and findings) and whether the manuscript is, in some way, a substantive
contribution to the discipline’s storehouse of knowledge.
A referee recommends whether the manuscript should be published as is,
whether it should be published after revisions that he deems necessary, or
whether it should not be published at all.
The editor collects the critiques of the referees and, based on them,
decides on the disposition of the manuscript.
A peer-reviewed book usually takes the form of
a monograph (i.e., a research work written by a scholar), a research work
written by a number of scholars jointly or a reader written by a number of
scholars separately, or a textbook.
Note that the mere fact that a book looks
like a monograph or a textbook does not establish that it was peer-reviewed.
Similarly, the mere fact that an article appears in a journal does not
establish that it was peer-reviewed.
You can be reasonably (but not necessarily fully) confident that a work
is peer-reviewed if (a) the volume says
that it has been peer-reviewed or (b) the publisher is known to publish only
peer-reviewed work. The University
of Georgia Press publishes only peer-reviewed works in such fields as political
science. The
American Political Science Review is
well-established as a peer-reviewed journal.
It is entirely possible that you might find a
Web page whose content has successfully undergone peer review.
How would you know? Perhaps
there is some indication on the page that it has successfully undergone peer
review. I don’t suppose that it is
obvious and inevitable that the content of a Web page has
not successfully undergone peer
review. Of course, it would be
foolish to assume that a random Web
page has undergone peer review.
You are welcome to ask the person who wrote the content.
PRIMARY SOURCES
A primary source is golden as a source for a
research paper. For example, the
content of President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union Message is a primary
source and is always appropriate for use‑‑assuming, of course, that something
contained in it is useful for your topic.
Obviously, you need to confirm that the instrument that you are using as
the source of the president’s message
is reliable. If John Doe uploaded a
Web page on which he says, “Here is what Obama said,” you should reserve
judgment about the reliability of Doe’s Web page as a source of what Obama said.
Prominent people are misquoted all
the time. On the other hand, if
you obtain the content of the president’s speech from the Web site of the White
House, you can be confident (but never 100-percent certain, because of such
things as human error) that it is an accurate rendition of what the president
said.
Who Wrote the Content of the Web Site?
If you are using APA style and you are
referencing a Web site, what do you put in the in-text citation?
You probably already know that, if you are referencing a book, your
citation will look like this:
“(Wilson, 1989, p. 111).” But what
about citing a Web page? This is
not a proper APA citation to a Web
page:
“(http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/10/09/remarks-president-campaign-event).”
As a matter of fact, the same rule applies as in the case of a book:
The citation should identify the
author’s name, the year of publication, and (if it happens to apply)
the page number.
Therefore, the correct citation for the Web page that contains President
Obama’s remarks during an October 9, 2012, campaign event is “(Obama, 2012).”
Sometimes, you will find a Web page whose
actual (human) author is not identified but that has been uploaded by an
organization of some kind. The
organization could be, for example, a business corporation, a government agency,
or an association. In that case,
the author of the Web page is the organization itself.
The citation could be, for example, “(U. S. Department of State, 2012).”
Remaining Web sites are those (a) for which no
(human) author is identifiable and (b) whose content is not identifiable as the
effort of any organization. The
identity of the author is, thus, unknown.
What would the citation say?
Actually, that is a trick question.
Why would anyone want to reference in a
research paper a Web page whose author is not identified and whose content is
not attributed to any organization?
The content of such a Web page is not useful for the research process,
and should not be referenced in a research paper.
This includes the content of Wikipedia entries.
Please remember: No author,
no reference. And if you are about
to write a citation like “(Anonymous, 2011, p. 3),” run‑‑do not walk‑‑to your
nearest professor for rehabilitative training.
“It Must Be True: I Read It on the
Internet”
Lastly, I address the matter of whether the
content of a Web page has any truth to it.
You have undoubtedly read Web pages and E‑mail messages whose content
consists of one or more blatant lies.
The Urban Legends and Snopes Web sites research the content of such
online sources, and expose many Web pages and E‑mail messages as being the
source of misunderstandings and/or deliberate, outright lies.
The moral of the story is this:
Do not jump to the conclusion that
the content of a Web page is true.
This rule applies no matter how professionally designed the Web page is!
Many liars know how to upload attractive Web pages.
To tell you the truth, there is
no source‑‑whether it is a primary
source or not, whether it is peer-reviewed or not, whether it is generated by a
government agency or not, and whether it is generated by your favorite news
organization or not‑‑that should induce you to suspend your healthy skepticism
and to believe that the content must be totally true.
Journalists have long had a bromide, popularized by the Chicago News
Service city-news bureau, that is instructive:
“If your mother says she loves you,
check it out.”
Try to remember these principles about sources:
n
A primary source is golden for determining something that a government official,
a government agency, a celebrity, etc., said.
That does not mean that the
speaker or writer was telling the truth.
The primary source is just a reliable source that establishes that the
person actually said or wrote it.
We know for a fact, from primary sources, that then-President Bill Clinton once
said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman‑‑Miss Lewinsky.”
We know from other primary sources that Clinton later acknowledged that
he did, in fact, have an illicit relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
n
A peer-reviewed source has a high probability of being an accurate
representation of some aspect of a topic about which scholars in a discipline
would like to discover interesting things.
Nevertheless, there remains some possibility that the author’s inquiry
was clumsy, that he has distorted information to “fit” some agenda that he has,
or that he is the poor soul who has committed a Type 1 statistical error because
his sample was one of the 5 percent of samples that will randomly appear to have
convincingly refuted a true null hypothesis.
In the final analysis, take even peer-reviewed scholarship with at least
a grain of salt.
n The Web site of a government official or a government agency amounts to a primary source. Whether it is a primary source or not, you should approach government Web sites, like all other Web sites, with a healthy degree of skepticism. A government Web site might be a reliable source for what the official or agency wants you to think, but its contents might not be truthful. On the other hand, there are government Web sites that offer unbiased information, and many of them have developed reputations for being the best sources of reliable data. These include Web sites of the Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U. S. Department of Commerce, the British Parliament, and a number of international organizations, such as:
● European Union.
● Inter-American Development Bank.
● International Monetary Fund.
● Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
● U. N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
● U. N. Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL).
● World Bank Group.
● World Trade Organization.
Specialized agencies of government can be good sources of reliable data. One may be able to determine whether content of a government Web site has been written by a well-qualified professional or scholar to help the user decide whether the Web site should be trusted. Don’t assume anything if you have no basis for making a judgment. You are advised to consult your instructor on this matter before or while you are conducting your research and writing your paper.
n
News-media sources are notorious for the erroneous content of news articles.
Typically, articles or news “stories” are rushed into print or rushed
into production for broadcast.
While news reporters may make good-faith efforts to check their facts, the
inescapable fact is that they work under deadline-driven conditions, and being
on time is more urgent than being accurate.
If you are writing a paper whose content is based on news-media sources,
you are using those sources for a purpose for which they are simply
not designed.
n
Be skeptical of claims from research guides that suggest that a Web site is
useful if its domain is “.gov,” “.edu,” etc.
Inspect any Web site, and use your judgment.
Whenever you find yourself falling into the habit of believing a Web site
because of its design, domain, or anything else, the best thing to do is stop,
get a good night’s sleep, and start again the next day with a fresh and critical
perspective about reality.
bdf –
uploaded 10/22/2012