Blog Topic: Your neighbor has
just been diagnosed with Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). He has a lot
of questions regarding the disease and treatment options. He has gone to the
following websites (see below) to do some research and now has come to you to
ask for your educated opinion. Compare and contrast these sites in regard to
the validity and reliability of their information. What credible resources
might you advise your neighbor to review? How can you validate the credibly of
a website?
www.wikipedia.org
www.webmd.com
www.cdc.gov
In today’s world of technology and
the World Wide Web, we have almost instant access to more information than we
ever thought possible. It is however
import as we search for information for scholarly use we must evaluate the
credibility of the website and its information.
With the huge amount of websites on the net today it is important to
separate advertisements, vanity sites, and legitimate scholarly based websites
(Tillman, 2015).
Wikipedia.org
is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit or add information to, it is likely
that most information found on the website is correct but one cannot be positive
because it had not been validated (Kocisis, 2012). Many times Wikipedia is a good place to start
looking for information that you may not be familiar with and then use that
data to find a validated scholarly website (Kocisis, 2012).
Webmd.com is WebMD is primarily
known for its public website, which has information about health and health
care, including a symptom checklist, pharmacy information, drugs information,
blogs of physicians with specific topics (Webmd.com, 2015). Webmd may not be the scholarly website that
it portrays to be. The site has become laden
with advertisements and a pursuit of profits has become its goal over that last
few years (Mercola, 2010). Many professionals in the health care field have
begun to see its information as advertising literature and not peer reviewed
(Mercola, 2010).
CDC.gov is the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. The CDC is the leading national public health
institute of the United States. The CDC is a federal agency under the
Department of Health and Human Services (CDC.gov). The government of the United States will only
provide validated health information provided respected professionals that specialize
in their field of study (CDC.gov). Governmental
websites from most western countries have been deemed trustworthy by most
publication associations (Carter, 2013).
I would recommend that the
neighbor keep his research aimed at governmental websites, sites associated
with universities, and non-profit sites that do not rely on advertisement for
their existence. There are plenty of
websites on most topics that are associated with non-profit agencies that are
known in their fields of study, such as American Heart Association, Cancer
Society, and many credential sites that give information along with their area
of concern.
It can sometimes be difficult to
validate a website today, there are many that intentional make themselves look
professional but in reality they exist to sell a product or even information on
a topic. We can validate websites by
researching professional organizations associated with the topic we are
interested in and see what sites are provided as links. Many professional journals list websites that
are professional and trustworthy. If
these processes fail we must look at the site itself by researching to see if
the site is transparent and who the site is associated with. Does the site back up its information with credible
sources, and does it disclose its funding and advertising sources (Honcode,
2015).
Carter, D. (2013). Validity
of website information today? Retrieved
from:
http://www.uni.edu/chfasoa/reliabilityandvalidity.htm
CDC.gov. (2015).
Centers for disease control and prevention. Retrieved from: www.http.cdc.gov
Honcode. (2015). Honcode Principles. Retrieved form: http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html
Kocisis, J. (2012).
What is Wikipedia? Retrieved
from:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/9/11/what-is-wiki/
Mercola, D. (2010).
Webmd may be deceiving you.
Retrieved from:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/12/14/webmd-not-the-independent-health-source-you-expected.aspx#!
Tillman, H. (2015). Evaluating quality on the net. Retrieved from:
http://www.hopetillman.com/findqual.php
Webmd.com. (2015). All about Webmd. Retrieved from: http://www.webmd/allaboutus.com
