Establishing the accuracy, or relative accuracy, of information is an important part of evaluating the reliability of a source. Fact-checking a source is relatively straight-forward; however, it is also important to consider the relative accuracy of opinions, interpretations, and ideas, that is, the intellectual integrity of the source.
In addition to errors of fact and integrity, you need to watch for errors of logic. Errors of logic occur primarily in the presentation of conclusions, opinions, interpretations, editorials, ideas, etc. Accuracy and authority are related in some ways. That said, our example site is a good one because the world of sports is quite a binary one. On one hand, statistics are absolute. If the UM baseball team beat Auburn and hit four solo home runs in the process, reporting the information is simply a matter of getting down the numbers.
On the other hand, sports prognostication and analysis is a huge business these days. Sure, there would be the numbers such as overall record, RPI, record against top teams, etc. But there is also the opinion aspect. Many sites from the United Kingdom will have a domain suffix of. Here follows a list of the most common domain suffixes and the types of organizations that would use them.
The information provided by commercial interests is generally going to shed a positive light on the product it promotes. While this information might not necessarily be false, you might be getting only part of the picture. Remember, there's a monetary incentive behind every commercial site in providing you with information, whether it is for good public relations or to sell you a product outright. Sites using this domain name are schools ranging from kindergarten to higher education.
If you take a look at your school's URL you'll notice that it ends with the domain. Information from sites within this domain must be examined very carefully. If it is from a department or research center at a educational institution, it can generally be taken as credible.
However, students' personal Web sites are not usually monitored by the school even though they are on the school's server and use the. If you come across a site with this domain, then you're viewing a federal government site.
All branches of the United States federal government use this domain. Information such as Census statistics, Congressional hearings, and Supreme Court rulings would be included in sites with this domain. The information is considered to be from a credible source. Generally, the information in these types of sites is credible and unbiased, but there are examples of organizations that strongly advocate specific points of view over others, such as the National Right to Life Committee and Planned Parenthood.
You probably want to give this domain a closer scrutiny these days. Some commercial interests might be the ultimate sponsors of a site with this suffix. This domain suffix is used by the various branches of the Armed Forces of the United States.
You might find any kind of site under this domain suffix. Is the publisher an official source, or at least a reliable source, or is it someone whose bias may affect the accuracy or reliability of the information? If you cannot tell who is responsible for the information, you should hesitate to use it unless you can otherwise confirm its reliability.
With primary legal sources — such as judicial opinions, statutes, and regulations — the government is the author, and government websites whose URLs end in. Educational websites whose URLs end in. However, when the information you find is a secondary source — something that was written to explain or comment on the law — you must evaluate the author's and publisher's authority, as well as their objectivity.
Just because an author or publisher has a particular bias does not mean that you must reject the information without further evaluation. Organizations that advocate for a particular point of view are frequently motivated to publish information related to their area of interest in a timely fashion. For example, an organization that files a lawsuit against a corporation or the government may make the documents in that lawsuit available on its website.
Those documents would be difficult to find on any other free website. Of course, if you find information on a website published by an organization representing one side of an issue, you must verify that the information is accurate, complete, and current. You must also distinguish between facts that can be verified and opinions presented as facts. And be cautious of any information you find from organizations that are not open about their point of view. Before you rely on information, you must be sure that it is complete and accurate.
Errors can occur even if a website is authoritative and unbiased. If you find information that is full of typographical errors and broken links, you should look for the information you need from a better source. It is always a good idea to verify any information on which you want to rely. You can do that by checking the authorities cited or linked on a web page and by finding the same information in two or more places.
The importance of your legal issue will help you determine how careful you should be that the information you find is accurate. When you are doing caselaw research on a topic, you usually need to have access to all the judicial opinions from the appropriate court s , which could be federal, a specific state, or both.
The United States is a common-law system, and rulings in cases decided many years ago may still be good law if they have not been overruled, reversed, or changed by statute. When you are doing statutory research, you need to have access to all the statutes in effect. This means that you should start your research in a statutory code , rather than in session laws. It also usually means that you will have to update your research with session laws passed since the last time the statutory code was updated.
Finally, you must evaluate legal information for currency. When was the web page you have found last updated?
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