Friday Reading Report: More Homework

I continue to work on my fitness nutrition certification.  As I have mentioned before, there is a lot of nutrition information out there, on the web, in magazines, in our friends’ heads.  Some of the information is better and some of it is misleading or plain old wrong.

My text offers the following advice from the American Dietetic Association on assessing the credibility of websites.  I am including some comments as well, because the most important thing to remember is to engage our critical faculties when deciding what is most likely to be true and correct.  Here goes:

•      What is [sic] (apparently knowing the nutrition stuff does not mean they know the grammar thing; they wanted to say “are.”) the background, credibility, and affiliation of the researchers or sources?

•      Does the website identify the publisher and any sponsors?  (The kind of people who need to ask this probably also need to be told why this might be important.  Sponsors who, say, manufacture the product in question, have a vested interest in providing information that is positive about the product.)

•      Does the website say who wrote it or how it was approved?

•      Is the information up-to-date?

•      Does the information include credibly references such as peer-reviewed journals?

•      Does the information present both [sic] (What?  Some kinds of information have WAY more than two perspectives to consider.  Also, um, some stuff is just plain bad for us; there is no other side…) perspectives of (ON, people.  ON the issue.) the issue?

•      Is the information balanced and [does] it state any caveats?

•      Is the website designed to sell products?

•      Are there links that provide support or more detail?

I realize I am a cranky older student compared to the target audience of the text.  That said, can we please decide as a culture that we are in favor of critical thinking and maybe even proofreading and grammar?

I keep doing my homework.  May we all continue to do the same.