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Feb
18
- How To Research On the Internet - Part 4, Blogs
- How To Research On the Internet - Part 3, Commercial Sites
- How To Research On the Internet - Part 2, The Government
- How To Research On the Internet - Part 1, The Wild World of Wikipedia
On Saturday, my wife, her sister, her sister’s husband and I spent a few hours touring the Northern California coast. The day didn’t start out as planned, we arrived at the Santa Cruz mystery spot to find it all sold out, so we tried to figure out new things to do. Want to take a guess as to how to went about researching things to see and places to visit? That’s right, we went online. That’s when I realized how much we depend on the internet as a research tool. I no longer go to the library or visit the reference desk at school, I now go online and Google for the topics I’m interested in.
So what does all this have to do with a fitness blog? Well, I’m a strong believer in research. I think that in order to be healthy, we need to understand how our bodies work. In fact, I really dislike fitness, diet or health books that tell me to do things without explaining why. Whenever I read something new or hear about some interesting study, my first reaction is to look it up online and find out more information. In other words, I think you should educate yourself before making changes to your health, and if you’re reading this blog, I’m guessing you agree.
However, here’s the problem, the internet is a wild and crazy place where people want to sell you drugs to enlarge various body parts, help you with loans from Zimbabwe and claim they’re a young Romanian woman who fell in love you last Tuesday when she saw you in that Cafe when she’s really a 40 year old man who wants your credit card information. So how the heck are you supposed to find reliable information that you trust? Well, that’s what this series of articles is going to be about. It’s not health specific but I think you’ll find it really helpful.
Wikipedia
One of the sources people keep using online is a wonderful and slightly crazy site called Wikipedia. It bills itself as an online encyclopedia and it’s one of the most popular sites on the internet. You’ll frequently see Wikipedia pages at or near the top of every search you run on Google. However, Wikipedia isn’t really a normal encyclopedia and it’s important to know that when you’re using it.
What Is Wikipedia?
Wikipedia is in fact an online encyclopedia but with a twist. Rather than being the product of a publishing house with professional editors, writers, proof reader and fact checkers on staff, Wikipedia is the product of, well, all of us. Wikipedia allows readers to create articles, edit existing entries and, in some case, even delete entries. Wikipedia does have a “staff” which supposedly oversees this process to keep it fair and objective, but this staff is volunteer only, occasionally biased and sometimes unprofessional.
In other words, I go to Wikipedia and I look up my blog, “60 in 3″. I find out that there is no entry by that name. I can now create an entry called “60 in 3″ and fill it in with whatever information I find appropriate. Other people can add, remove or change information in this entry. If there was already an entry for 60 in 3, I could edit information on it, suggest that it be deleted or add my own text to the entry. How that’s a bit of an oversimplification. There is actually a process around all this. For example, you have to be a registered user and for some actions, you need to get the approval of moderators. However, I think you get the idea. Essentially, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia where the information is created by the readers.
Why Use Wikipedia?
The easy answer is because it’s free, easily accessible and has an amazing amount of information due to the large number of contributors. The encyclopedia Brittanica might have 10 people researching health or fitness and creating articles about it. Wikipedia has 10 million people creating the same articles. Among these millions of people are doctors, personal trainers, athletes, coaches and a whole bunch of other experts who might have useful information to share. You’ll find entries in Wikipedia on a much wider variety of topics than in any other encyclopedia just because of the sheer amount of contributors. For the most part, this information will be relatively accurate because there are millions of people proof reading it each and every day.
Why Not Use Wikipedia?
Oddly enough, the reasons to not use Wikipedia are pretty much the same as the ones to use it. In other words, you should watch out for Wikipedia because it’s free, easily accessible and has a large number of contributors. What does that mean? Well, it means that any random person could contribute information to an entry or article. If that person is an expert, that’s great. However, there’s nothing that guarantees that they are an expert. What if they’re some average joe who just read a neat article about how cabbage soup makes you healthy and fit. Joe then decides to share this information and creates an entry for it on Wikipedia. All of a sudden we have we have an encyclopedia entry that clearly shows cabbage soup is the best thing ever for your health! Hopefully, some other people will find this entry and correct it, but what if they don’t?
Even worse, what about people who intentionally leave misleading information? It’s bad enough when someone puts in some obviously incorrect information, those things are usually caught pretty quickly. However, what if it’s something a lot more subtle and malicious? Many companies and industries regularly check their entries on Wikipedia and make alteration where necessary. So what if the fast food industry found an article on Wikipedia that shows saturated fats were bad for you? Could they just alter it? The answer is, absolutely. Even worse, they can alter it in far more insidious ways than an incorrect entry about cabbage soup. They can load false facts about scientific research, change words slightly to make things seem better or they can subtly change the entry to make it say something totally different. These kind of edits are much harder to spot and correct and make Wikipedia vulnerable to malicious users who may not have your best interests in mind.
So Should We Use Wikipedia?
Can you really trust information from a source where anyone and everyone can add information? For me, the answer is no. However, Wikipedia is still the first place I go to when I’m researching something. How do I reconcile these two things? Easily, I just view any information I find on Wikipedia with the knowledge that it may be unreliable. Does this mean it’s not useful? Not at all. For example, almost all Wikipedia entries have references included at the end of the article. This means I can read the entry and then check out these references for proof and more information.
In other words, think about Wikipedia like this, if you had a question and went outside and shouted it out, how much would you trust the answers you got back? Now what if you had a tool that allowed you to shout your question to the whole world or at least the portion of the world that uses the internet? That tool is essentially Wikipedia. Sounds good but just remember that you know nothing about the people who are shouting answers back at you. You don’t know where they got their answers, what their motivations are for answering your question or what their level of expertise is. So you shouldn’t put all your trust in the the answers they give you.
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Wikipedia is a great starting point for any online research. However, it should be viewed as a starting point and not as an end point. Make sure to check facts you find on Wikipedia with other, more reliable sources, especially on controversial and/or critical topics like health, fitness and diet.
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3 Responses to “How To Research On the Internet - Part 1, The Wild World of Wikipedia”
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I cannot live without wikipedia. In fact, I can even get lost in time as I get so enthralled by all the links of information. One thing I do when I get info from wikipedia that might be suspect, I go elsewhere on the web to see if I can find corroborating information. If I do, then I know the info is good.
Another positive of wikipedia is that I like the idea of the “community” editor. Even if the food or pharma folks come in and try to manipulate the info, someone else can equally come in and balance out that info.
[...] Monday we talked about research and how important it is for health. We also talked about a great, although sometimes suspect source of information, Wikipedia. Today, [...]
[...] being better at finding research on it is an invaluable skill. Over the past two posts, we covered Wikipedia and the Government. Today, I’m going to talk about some other information sources, commercial [...]