How To Research On the Internet - Part 4, Blogs

I’ve been talking about researching information on the internet over the last few posts. I realize it’s not a topic that’s directly related to health, but I think it’s a useful topic since information is key to improving your health. Without information, you have no choice but to blindly follow what other people tell you to do, never really understand why you’re doing it and what the effect might be. So here we are, on day 4 of this series, discussing one of my favorite topics, blogs.

What Are Blogs?

Blogs, a term that comes from the combination of Web and Log, are sort of like an online diary. A blog’s content are posts made by the author, also called articles. Some blogs post multiple articles a day, some post one every week. Some blogs are a one man or woman operation, others are commercial enterprises with dozens of employees. So what the heck makes a blog different from other websites?

Well, I suppose it’s the periodic nature of their content. Think for a second of the difference between a book and a magazine. A book is relatively static. It’s written and released and that’s it. Oh there might be new editions, updates or revisions, but these are rare and they don’t change the whole book, they just modify it slightly. A magazine on the other hand, completely changes its content with every article. A magazine might have some central topic or theme which stays the same from issue to issue, but the content of each issue is completely separate.

Well, the same sort of difference applies to blogs and static websites. A static website is exactly that, static. For example, the National Park Service website doesn’t change very often. They might add some information such as warnings or advisories, and once in a while they may update the site itself, but in general, the National Park Service website will always have the same content. 60 in 3 on the other hand, is a blog. If you came here two weeks ago you would see posts on workouts. Last week you would see posts about research. Next week you might see posts about bouncing on trampolines and the proper nutrition associated with eggs. In other words, the content on a blog such as 60 in 3 is always changing, much like that of a magazine.

Are Blogs Commercial Websites?

Many of them are, yes. For example, 60 in 3 has advertising which you can see on the left hand side of this page. Other blogs might carry advertising as well as try to sell you some products. For example, one of my favorite blogs, Mark’s Daily Apple, is a blog, but it also has an online store which sells nutritional supplements. Another of my favorite blogs is Louis Gray’s blog about technology issues in Silicon Valley. At first glance, this seems to be a noncommercial blog. It doesn’t sell you anything nor does it have advertisement. However, Louis Gray’s blog is still commercial in a way. Rather than sell a product or advertisements, Louis is selling his own brand. That is, Louis’ blog is a way for him to raise his own visibility, something that could lead to commercial engagements down the road.

So How Should I Use Blogs?

That’s an interesting question. Most bloggers are not professionals on the topic they’re blogging on. I’m not a doctor nor a personal trainer. Most of the other fitness and health bloggers aren’t either. Some of us might be amateur athletes and we may in fact have a lot of personal experience with our topics, but we’re not professionals. So why should you listen to us? Well, because the information we have and find is useful.

The Information Bloggers Have

First of all, bloggers have a lot of useful personal information. Much of this information is personal and comes from actual experience. For example, I’ve been working out for years and I’ve struggled with my own fitness and health issues. So many of my posts are based on that experience. Will everything I went through apply to you? Not really, everyone is different. However, much of my personal experience could be applicable to your own health problems and hence the information is valuable.

The Information Bloggers Find

In addition to having a lot of useful personal information, bloggers also serve as a filter of sort. Do you really have the time to read up on every topic that interests you? I know I don’t. Much as I would love to stay up to date on books, fitness, technology news, politics and other subjects, I just don’t have the time. So I rely on bloggers, people with interest in a specific field, to filter the news for me.

For example, I love news about technology start up and cool new online services. However, I just don’t have the time to keep up with all the tech news these days. So I rely on Louis Gray’s blog as a filter. Louis does the research for me and posts about interesting companies, services or topics. I then go and read his blog. In this way Louis has served as a filter for my technology interests. He spent time to sift out the valuable information so that I don’t have to.

The same applies to 60 in 3. There’s are endless amounts of fitness and health information out there. Instead of reading it all and trying to figure out what’s important and what’s not, you can subscribe to a blog like 60 in 3 or Mark’s Daily Apple and have that immense stream of data filtered to just the valuable pieces. Is it fool proof? No, not really. There are plenty of times when I look at Louis’ site and find nothing interesting and I’m sure 60 in 3 readers sometimes (but not too often I hope) have the same experience. However it’s better than any other approach I’ve found.

So How Should We Use Blogs?

You know that friend or relative you have who loves a particular topic? For example, my brother is a history nut. He loves history. You know how you always go to this friend or relative when you have questions about this topic? I certainly do. Each time I watch a movie that takes place in some historical context, I talk to my brother to see how accurate the movie got it. Well bloggers are like this person. They’re your very own personal expert. They’re not professionals but the’re the next best thing. They help us with common every day issues that we may not be experts on and they filter information for us so we can devote our time to other topics.

Bloggers can and do have their own bias, but it’s usually more of a personal bias than a commercial one. For example, I hate fad diets so I tend to have a bias against them. This means I’m unlikely to be objective when I review a diet I consider a fad. I try to be but, being human, it’s very hard for me to completely ignore my biases. So when you read a blog, keep in mind the following few things:

• Bloggers are NOT objective, nor do most of them try to be objective.
• Bloggers do have a bias and they usually make it quite clear.
• Bloggers are not professionals.
• Bloggers are valuable for the personal experience they have.
• Bloggers are valuable for the information they can filter for you.

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Like any other website, blogs have their own bias and their own issues. However, they’re usually more open about them than other websites. Blogs are useful for the personal experience bloggers share and as a filter for large amounts of information.

How To Research On the Internet - Part 3, Commercial Sites

We’ve been talking this week about ways to search for information on the internet. I believe that, while not directly related to health and fitness, this is still an important topic since information is the best weapon we have in the struggle to be fit and healthy. Since the internet is one of our primary sources of information, 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 sites and blogs.

Commercial Sites, A Definition

Commercial sites are ones which try to sell you something or make money off of you in some way. That’s a pretty broad definition, and some blogs might actually fall into this category. However, because they are relatively unique, I chose to separate blog into their own category.

Examples of Commercial Sites

Here some examples of what I would define as a commercial site:

• Secret Food Cures - This is an obvious commercial site which tries to sell you a book.
• Lipitor - This site is not so obviously commerical. It’s the official site for one of the most widely used drugs on the market. It doesn’t seem to sell you anything but the reality is that it tries to sell you on Lipitor. This site is a marketing site intended to drive up the sales of Lipitor and that makes it a commercial site.
• Cooper’s Guns - I love this site and I use it extensively. Still, it’s a commercial site that tries to make money off of you by selling you products and getting you to click on advertising.
• Web MD - Another site that doesn’t seem commercial. Web MD is a great source of information on a whole variety of health related topics. However, this site is commercial and makes money through advertising.

Why Should You Care That A Site Is Commercial?

Well, because that could indicate a bias in the information on the site. Sometimes this bias is obvious. For example, the Secret Food Cures site is clearly not an objective way to see reviews about the book. The Lipitor site also has a pretty obvious bias. The site was created by Pfizer, the creator of Lipitor, in order to raise awareness of the drug because this will help increase sales.

Is this a bad thing? Does it mean the product is no good? Not at all. My mother happens to have a Lipitor prescription and it’s helped her tremendously. Also, I happen to think that there is a lot of useful information on these websites and I applaud the companies for putting them up. I would much rather have the truth with some marketing spin than I no information at all. At least with some of the truth out there on the product’s official website I can go to other sites and find out the rest of the truth, and that’s exactly the point.

Don’t be afraid of using these sites as a source of information. There is a lot of good information on them. However, it’s important to know a website’s bias when reading it. If you read about other drugs on the lipitor site, you should keep in mind that this is a Pfizer site intended to drive their sales. Are these other drugs also owned by Pfizer or by competitors? Should a doctor’s opinion on the Lipitor site count as objective?

If you read about other books on the Secret Food Cures site, you should keep in mind that this site is intended to sell books. If these are other books from the same publisher or author then the site has a motive to play them up. If they are competitor books then the site has a bias against them. Same for book reviews on the site. Can they really be objective? Also, are reviews on the Secret Food Cures site (or the Lipitor site for that matter) giving you the whole picture? After all, the owners of these sites want to drive sales. They have no incentive to show you negative information and quite a bit of incentive to not show it.

So Should You Use These Commercial Sites?

Absolutely, I use them all the time. Just keep in mind the bias I just reviewed. These commercial sites want to sell you something. Any information you read on these sites should be viewed with that in mind. Essentially, read everything on these sites as a sales pitch and not as unbiased information. A sales pitch can still contain useful facts but it can also lie through omission or mislead you into believing something that’s not quite true. Plus sales pitches rarely present you with the whole picture.

What About Advertising Driven Sites?

The Lipitor and Secret Food Cures sites were obvious sales pitches, but what about more subtle commercial sites like Web MD? These sites aren’t trying to sell you anything. Instead, they’re to drive up page views and get more visitors to their site. This allows them to sell more advertising at higher rates and make more money. That means that they too have a bias, but it’s a much more subtle one than the sales pitch sites.

Whereas a sales pitch site tries to sell you something, an advertising driven site tries to get you to visit the site by offering interesting information. Notice that I did not say useful or factual information. Articles do not have to be truthful, factual or even useful in order to be interesting. Heck, half the crap I read on a daily basis on the internet is neither truthful nor factual and it’s definitely not useful.

Now that said, these sites do have a vested interest in being both useful and truthful. Useful articles are usually more interesting and a site that gets a reputations for delivering factually incorrect will quickly lose its audience. So yes, these sites do have incentive to not lie. However, does this mean their articles are completely unbiased? Not at all.

The Advertising Bias

Any site driven by advertising is driven by the need to increase viewer, readers, clicks or however else you measure their popularity. This means that advertising driven sites are specifically driven to show you articles and content that will drive viewership. This means they may not provide you with the complete picture. Take a look at the following headlines:

1. Five ways to lose weight
2. Eating too many tomatoes will kill you
3. Drinking beer will make you healthy
4. A five year cohort study of the effect of Omega 3 acids on omentum area fat accumulation in middle aged males and the corresponding risk of a cardiac event

By the way, all of these are made up headlines.

Which ones are you likely to read? Well, most people would read number 1 and 3. Why? Because those matter to them. People want to lose weight and they drink beer. So articles about those topics will be interesting to them. In fact, articles that validate our current behavior are really popular because we like being told we’re doing the right thing. So for many people, article 3 is a must read. Headline 2 is somewhat interesting but come on, who here eats so many tomatoes that they’re really worried about eating too many of them? Article 4 sounds so boring that the heading itself probably turned most people away. Readers also love controversy so any article which generates controversy is great. And finally, fear sells, so any article which causes fear will also be a sure seller.

So now, if you’re the owner of a site that makes money by getting readers, which headline are you going to show? Headline 1 is the first choice. It validates a lot of behavior so people will want to read it plus it’s controversial so that will get even more readers. Headline 1 is interesting but you might want to change it to “five ways to lose weight and lower your diabetes risk” because that also plays up the fear factor. You may display headline 2 because it does generate some fear and controversy but that’s unlikely. Unfortunately, you’ll almost never display headline 4 because, although it might be amazingly informative, it also sounds boring and boring doesn’t sell advertisement. All of this is a bit exaggerated, but I think you get the picture. Advertising driven sites will not deliberately mislead you, but they may choose stories that don’t tell the whole picture because they want to sell more advertising.

Are These Companies Evil For Putting Marketing Spin On The Truth?

Not at all. These companies, authors and whoever else puts up a site for their product is in the business of making money. To not put some marketing spin out there would be a disservice to their shareholders. I just think we need to be aware of this spin and keep it in mind when we do research on these commercial sites.
Bloggers!

And that brings us to tomorrow’s topic, bloggers.

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Just like government sites, commercial sites can be a very useful source of information. Just keep in mind that they’re in this for money. Once you realize that, you should be able to make better use of their information.

UPDATE

I added the “Are These Companies Evil…” section at the bottom of the post due to an email I just received. The email claims that I am somehow antibusiness. I find this ironic because I got no such email of protest for my last post when I claimed government sites had their own bias. I would have thought people would have been more upset at that than they were at this. Anyway, I added a section to clarify. By the way, I’m a marketing person myself.

How To Research On the Internet - Part 2, The Government

On 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, we’re going to continue this discussion by focusing on a different source of information online, the government.

If you look hard enough, the government has quite a few sites that offer valuable information about health online. Here are the ones I like using:

• The Food and Drug Administration - The department that regulates what we eat and drink. This site has a wealth of information about products you find at the local supermarket and why you may or may not want to buy them.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - The people responsible for responding to diseases and trying to reduce their impact. Good source of information on things to watch out for, symptoms of specific diseases and current threats.
• The National Library of Medicine - General research site. Has an incredible amount of information about anything health related. Navigating it is a bit of an issue but it’s a good resource.
• The National Institutes of Health - This is who the government uses to do their research. Most health related government studies come out of here.
• Department of Health and Human Services - The department responsible for almost anything health related in the US. Most of the organizations I listed above are part of the health and human services department.
• The World Fact Book - Brought to you by the wonderful people at the CIA, the World Fact Book is your source for a wide variety of information on the world at large. Want to know the land area of China? The World Fact Book has it!
• The National Park Service - If you’re an outdoor enthusiast like me, this site is great. National Parks are not just limited to know Yosemite, The Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. This site will teach you a lot about national parks and introduce you to some you may not have known about. It was through this site that I found Pinnacles National Monument, a park only an hour or so away from my home that proved to be an incredible hiking experience.

There are also local government sites which are helpful. Here’s a sampling of sites from my area:

• California State Parks - Same as the national park service but on a local level. Every state should have one of these and they’re a great way to find some local hiking
• California Department of Health - The state equivalent of the federal department of health. Some useful information and a lot of programs that seem interesting. I find the state version to be less useful than either the county or the federal versions.
• Santa Clara County Parks - Same as the state site but for county parks.
• Santa Clara County Health and Human Services - All counties will have some kind of health and human services dept. At the county level you probably won’t find many studies but you will find a lot of information about programs that could be interesting. For example, I found some free fitness workshops through my county site.

By the way, most if not all government websites will have the .gov extension. This is important because there are quite a few sites that seem like a government agency but really aren’t.

Feeling Lost? Google To The Rescue!

If you’ve clicked on some of these links you may have noticed that government web designers have a thing or two to learn from the private sector. The information on most government websites is not laid out in the most intuitive of ways. Some sites are better than others, but many of them are difficult to work with. Have no fear, the wonderful people at Google have a way of helping:

Google Government Search

This is the Google government search tool. Just enter in terms like you would on a normal Google search and Google will check most government sites for articles that match what you’re looking for. It’s not quite as good as an expert looking through some of these sites, but really, do you have time to become an expert at every single government site?

Keep In Mind, Governments Have Their Own Bias

When you’re using all of these sites, keep one thing in mind. Governments are not unbiased. Politics and science should not mix and yet they do, over and over again. Over the past twenty years, we’ve seen government distort science, usually on behalf of big business. So when you read anything on a government site, keep in mind that their interests may not be the same as yours. For example, the FDA’s food pyramid is notorious for being influenced by various agricultural interests. Does this invalidate information you find on government sites? No, not really, but it does make it a bit suspect.

Personally, I use government websites as my second line of research. That is, once I’ve done a bit of research on Wikipedia, I turn to government websites to see what information is out there. The information I find is almost always well laid out and very professional in its set up and research. I also use government websites as my first source of information for anything government related (well duh!). That means if I’m looking for information on a public park or a public program, I go to one of these sites first.

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In short, treat the government as you would Wikipedia, it’s a good source of information but should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. I’m a bit saddened by having to say this, but our government is no longer an unbiased source of useful information. As long as you keep that in mind, you should find a wealth of useful information on the various government websites.

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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