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Feb. 11, 2025 - Skeptoid
20:00
Skeptoid #975: How We Verify Our Sources

A few of your favorite experts weigh in on how you can make sure your information comes from the very best sources. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Verifying Primary Sources 00:07:27
So I see you're reading a non-fiction book.
Is it any good?
What's the quality of information that it presents?
How do you know?
These are questions that are hopefully in the back of your mind whenever you pick a book off a shelf.
Unfortunately, there are lots of reasons why certain authors may have little motivation for doing original research using the best sources to produce the most informative book.
What are those reasons?
We're going to find out right now on Skeptoid.
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You're listening to Skeptoid.
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
How we verify our sources.
Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience, real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not.
If you're living in the 21st century, this is not the first time you've heard that misinformation abounds right now.
But today I'm not talking about the kind of misinformation that might float around your table at the brew pub with your friends when discussing the events of the day.
I'm talking about the kind that might steer you astray should you be writing an article or working on a book or some film project.
When you assume the role of a communicator who is going to put words into some lasting form, rather than just blurting them out in a social gathering, you're taking on the obligation of an extra layer of responsibility to make sure that what you put down into words is as correct as possible.
So I thought I'd talk a bit about how I go about it, but then it occurred to me that if one guy's process is good, then six people's would be even better.
So I went out to five colleagues, podcasters and science writers all, to have them share a bit of how they do it too.
And to get us started, I'm going to take you back in time to one of the very first people I knew in this business, whom I met in 2008 when we shot The Skeptologists.
There's too much information to keep track of.
This is Dr. Kiki from This Week in Science.
In the ideal situation, every person should verify information sources in order to truly understand the world.
But the world isn't an ideal place, and the idea that anyone aside from the motivated and properly informed will successfully attempt the increasingly arduous task of questioning and verifying all sources of information they encounter is unrealistic.
The growing societal problem of information overwhelm is compounded by the rapid development of artificially generated information and content.
The average person's capacity to verify the fire hose is limited to non-existent given the daily pressures of modern life.
As humans, we're predisposed to trust and believe information that confirms what we already believe and that supports our identities, while relying on trusted individuals to minimize the mental energy required to integrate any new information.
So long as people only have time to check their phone or do a quick skim of Wikipedia when they want to learn something, there's going to be no standards for the quality of information they get.
It's the person who takes the time to find a good book and then the time to read it who is almost always going to get better information.
Here are some thoughts on how to do that.
Go to the primary source when you can.
I'm Curly Tlapoyawa with the Tales from Astlantis podcast, where we examine Chicano, Mexicano, and Mesoamerican history and archaeology, and we help combat the spread of disinformation about those topics.
Due to the nature of our podcast, verifying our sources is extremely important.
The main way that we do this is by relying upon primary source documents as much as possible.
So manuscripts, diaries, artifacts, codices, recordings, etc., that were created by the people who were actually there.
Individuals who have direct knowledge of what we are investigating.
And of course, the more primary source documents we can refer to, the better, since the biases and experiences of the authors may offer contradictory accounts and provide for more context.
So when you're utilizing secondary sources like journal articles or books, always check the citations and references and then verify that the authors are using those citations accurately and honestly.
On more than one occasion, I have double-checked an author's citation only to find out that they were misrepresenting the primary source that they were citing.
I've found this exact same thing too.
When I did episode number 118 on The Bell Witch, the main book that everyone uses as their main source was written by a guy named Ingram who claimed that he got everything from a diary given to him by one of the people involved in the original incident.
That diary would be the primary source Curly is talking about.
But it turns out that no such diary ever existed.
Ingram made it up and made up most of the story to sell a book.
But you'll usually end up going with a secondary source.
I'm Ben Radford, deputy editor for Skeptical Inquirer Science magazine, co-host of the Squirreling Strange podcast, and a research fellow with the Center for Inquiry.
Verifying sources is crucial to my work in books for several reasons.
Chief among them, I want to be right.
Not just for the sake of being right, because after all, no one likes to be wrong, but because it means you are a credible source of information and knowledge.
It's what's called due diligence.
If a writer or researcher can't be bothered to verify their sources, you have no reason to assume the accuracy of anything they say you're right.
Doing so is no guarantee of truth, of course, since any source can be wrong.
But it does improve the chances that the research will be accurate, because primary sources are often the most reliable.
Promote Essential Skills 00:02:34
Anytime a writer tells you or summarizes what another source did, said, or wrote, there are many opportunities for misunderstandings, misinterpretations, biases, and other influences.
The best way to avoid these and demonstrate the quality of your research is to verify your sources whenever possible and practical.
Don't assume, verify.
It's true so many authors of second-tier mass-market paperbacks simply summarize or restate chapters written by previous authors.
The book consisting of original research is increasingly rare.
The copycat authors become like a game of telephone.
Each time the story gets republished, it becomes less accurate.
In a world that can feel overwhelming, spreading thoughtful, evidence-based content is one of the best ways to make a positive impact.
Ask your local public radio station to air the Skeptoid Files, a 30-minute radio-friendly version of Skeptoid that pairs two related episodes promoting real science, true history, and critical thinking.
And in these challenging times for public media, we're offering these broadcasts for free to radio stations, available on the PRX Exchange or directly from Skeptoid Media.
It's an easy ask.
Just send a quick message to your station's programming director.
By helping to bring the Skeptoid files to the airwaves, you'll help promote the essential skills we all need to tell fact from fiction.
Just go to your local station's website, find the programming director's email address, or just their general email address.
You can even use the telephone.
I know that might sound crazy.
It's an old legacy device that allows real-time voice communication.
I know that's weird, but hey, it's an option.
The world can feel chaotic, but you're not powerless.
When you promote critical thinking, you can help your community tell fact from fiction.
And that's how we shape a better future.
In uncertain times, spreading good ideas can make you feel helpful, not helpless.
Let's stand up for reason, truth, and understanding together.
Get them to air the Skeptoid files from Skeptoid Media, available on the PRX Exchange, and they'll know what that is.
Learning about your source can be hard.
I'm Celestia Ward, co-host of Squaring the Strange.
Stand Up For Reason 00:06:44
My background includes a bachelor's in writing and a decade editing at a university press, where I learned my way around a references section long before Wikipedia existed.
Since technology has democratized publishing, it's vital that researchers learn how to sift worthwhile sources from the sea of misinformation at our fingertips.
Ask, is the author an established authority in their field?
And are they writing about something in their field?
Do they work at a credible institution?
Does the material contain many typos or strange turns of phrase, indicating it's not ever been edited or reviewed?
Is it in an established journal or platform?
Misinformation often tries to dress up as legitimate by referencing a long list of sources.
But when you click on these, do you find biased, self-published junk, or simply more work by the same unknown author?
Primary sources are the gold standard, but you will also have to read the work of others.
And keeping these things in mind will help guide your search.
I'm reminded of a topic we touched on in episode number 966, a recent student questions episode, where someone asked about a technique called brain fingerprinting, reading an EEG and studying the person's response to a particular stimulus to determine whether it was significant to them.
The leading authority in this field, going by number of publications, is a guy named Larry Farwell.
So you might conclude that he's the guy.
Anything he writes is going to be the best on the topic.
But it turns out almost all the publications on brain fingerprinting are by him.
And when you look at one of his papers, almost all of his citations are of his own work.
It takes going out to find the rare paper written by anybody else to find that brain fingerprinting has little or no scientific support outside of Larry Farwell's mind.
Take later retellings of events with a grain of salt.
This is Richard Saunders from Australian Skeptics and the Skeptic's Own Podcast.
Many years ago, I picked up an invaluable lesson from listening to Skeptoid, the episode on the Westall UFO incident of 1966 here in Australia.
Brian Dunning mentioned checking to see what the newspapers at the time of an event reported, as he found that later reports over the years built on and embellished, sometimes into fantasy, the originally reported events.
Since then, when researching an event, I have always gone back to whatever I can find that was reported at the time.
The original sources, you might say.
Newspapers on microfilm in libraries or, more recently, available online from scans can offer a good place to start.
But we must keep in mind that while the reporting at the time of an event may not be completely accurate, it is vital to use these first reports to help build up a better understanding of what may have occurred.
It may also give you an opportunity to cross-match reports of the same event in different newspapers or even news, radio, TV, reports.
This can help to verify.
Our recent history is largely archived and more and more it is being made available.
It's calling to you over the decades and centuries.
It is still of great use and wants to be read.
My favorite example of this happening was the Rendlesham Forrest UFO case, told in episode number 135.
Today it gets retold all the time on the streaming network UFO programs, and the story today is completely unrecognizable.
When you go back to the original reports from the day it happened, the Air Force reports, the police reports, and the newspaper reports said very little and concluded that there was nothing of interest.
But then, decades later, a few guys who played bit parts originally have become celebrities because they've added and added to their stories, making up new events out of whole cloth and completely contradicting everything they said at the time.
Bottom line here is if you want to learn about something that happened in 1980, read what was published in 1980.
Don't trust that a pseudo-documentary made 45 years later is going to stick to those original, true but more boring reports.
Beware of the evil ones.
Dr. Kiki continues.
Sources across the board are manipulating people with emotion to gain trust for their various goals.
One formidable tool is misinformation, which can be based on honest misunderstandings or misstating of quotes or evidence, but can be used to seed and frame narratives.
Alternatively, disinformation uses active lies and propaganda to sway belief.
Regardless of the mechanism, how many people know the difference or care?
I and others who produce factual content work very hard to do the verification so that others don't have to work so hard themselves.
But people need to trust us before they will listen.
The corruption of the media ecosystem by biased actors and profit-oriented technology infrastructure is going to make it more and more difficult to truly verify any information.
And while increasing awareness of and training in information verification is necessary, it is not sufficient to address the scope of the problem.
The solution depends on long-term strategy and investment in aligning educational curricula with skills that reinforce consideration and validation of knowledge and the methods used to produce it.
And that's really the cherry on top of this problem.
Lazy and inaccurate information is one thing, but deliberate disinformation takes it to a new level.
This is the easiest to spot, but only for those who take the real time and trouble to do so and who have enough experience to know what to look for.
For the average person for whom a glance at their phone is the way they get most of their information, they are the ones almost certain to be deceived into adopting a false narrative that Dr. Kiki is talking about.
Support Skeptoid Media 00:03:10
Don't let that be you.
We continue with a 20th century case where a book that was poorly sourced ended up having enormous historical impact in the ad-free and extended premium feed.
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Hi, Mitch.
And by the way, I have a talk that I give on just this subject called How to Beat Misinformation Before It Beats You.
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