Week 6 Blog

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   Many professionals in the health care field have begun to see its information as advertising literature and not peer reviewed (Mercola, 2010).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