Fake News, its not just Politics.
It's not uncommon to be scrolling through Facebook and see an article with a headline like, "Doctors everywhere are recommending this pill for fast safe weight-loss!" and from that you might be led to an advertisement, but if an article appeared instead, would you trust an article that popped up on your Facebook feed, or would you dismiss it for that reason alone? We are living in the age of "fake news", and while that heavily involves important issues like politics, it is important to remember that science news article can easily be fake news. So what can you do to prevent yourself from falling victim to a fake news story? Here are a four tips to ensure the sources you use are supplying you accurate and reliable information:
1. Just because an article is published on a popular/well known website, does not mean that it is reliable.
2. You should research your research! Make sure to google your source, this is an easy way to find whether or not your source is reliable, some websites have a entire page explaining what they do to insure what they are producing accurate information like peer-review. If the website doesn't have a page like such, you can look at researcher's/public review of a website, if the website has mostly negative comments than you should not use it as a trusted resource.
3. If sources try and get you to donate to their cause, you should immediately start to question the authenticity of the information (the information can still be valid, but you should closely go over it to make sure all the information is accurate)
4. Trust your gut! If information does not seem right, make sure you cross check information with other reliable sources
These are only a few of the things that you should do check the authenticity of your source! Happy researching!
If you'd like to read more regarding Science fake news, here is an article for the Los Angeles Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-fake-science-news-20170103-story.html
