March 4, 1999
Whales in the Minnesota River? T
OURISTS drove six hours to Mankato, Minn., in search of underground
caves and hot springs mentioned on
a Web site. When they arrived, there were
no such attractions.
People searching for a discussion of
Amnesty International's views on Tunisia
learned about human rights in that North
African country -- but from supporters of
the Tunisian authorities, not from the human rights group. The government supporters brought surfers to a site with a
soothing Web address: www.amnesty-tunisia.org.
And bibliophiles who trust the grande
dame of on-line retailers, Amazon.com, for
suggestions under the headings of "Destined for Greatness" and "What We're
Reading" were dismayed to learn that
some publishers had paid for special treatment for their books -- meaning a more
accurate heading would have been "What
We're Paid to Say We're Reading." (After
the disclosure, Amazon added a note on its
home page to make a subtle acknowledgement of the practice.)
On the World Wide Web, straight facts
can be hard to find. After plowing through
dense and recalcitrant search engines that
offer more sites than you can point a
mouse at, after enduring delays, lost links
and dead ends and arriving at a site that
looks just right, Web surfers must deal
with uncertainty: Is the information true,
unbiased and free of hidden sales pitches?
Even though it is easy to fall prey to
parodies, politics, payola and ignorance on
line, solid, watertight information can indeed be found on the Web.
But experts on
Internet research point out that the Web is
largely unregulated and unchecked, and so
they agree that it is wise to be skeptical:
Consider the source. Reconsider the
source. Is the information up to date and
professional and traceable? Can it be verified, or the source checked, off line? And
just who was that source again?
Don Ray, a freelance investigative reporter in Burbank, Calif., and the author of
"Checking Out Lawyers" (MIE Publishing,
1997), has what he calls a J.D.L.R. test to
apply to Web research. "There should be a
switch in every Internet user that toggles
when something Just Doesn't Look Right,"
he said, "to make them re-evaluate the
credibility of the source." If a Web page has
grammatical errors, sloppy spelling or a
goofy design, that makes him distrust the
content.
And people who are getting ready to
spend money on the basis of Web information should, of course, approach their decisions with at least as much skepticism as
they would use about a purchase off line.
Whoppers have found a home on the Web
since the very beginning. Yet for many
people, computers have generally been
treated as authority figures, able to calculate compound interest in a single bound. A
machine that has been perfected by institutions of higher learning and is relied on by
the Government isn't likely to lie, is it?
"We've inherited this notion that if it pops
up on a screen and looks good, we tend to
think of it as fairly credible," said Paul
Gilster, author of "Digital Literacy" (Wiley
Computer Publishing, 1997.)
Although the Web has come to resemble a
monstrous library system where everyone
has a printing press and all information is
seemingly created equal, even the newest
surfers come to it with useful information-sorting skills from the off-line world. They
can differentiate among information from a
trusted newspaper, a bulk mailing from a
charity, a sales pitch from a stockbroker
and a letter from a friend. They can distinguish commercial broadcasts from public
television programs. They can skim over
the pages in Reader's Digest with "Advertisement" printed at the top.
But on the Web, the clues for credibility
are different, and so are the tools needed to
assess the information.
How can someone
know if a favorite portal site is making a
nanobuck in sales commission every time
the person buys something at the florist
featured on the page? Comments from people who are either touting or trashing a
stock on the Web for their own financial gain
have been investigated repeatedly by the
Federal Government. And is that medical
information on that site underwritten by a
drug company or by someone on drugs?
Research specialists agree on the importance of determining who finances a site
and what profit motives may be at work.
While the boundary between news material
and advertising is fairly clearly marked in
many print publications, on the Web the
signals pointing to paid content are often
subtle or nonexistent, or vary widely from
site to site.
Amazon.com's practice is only the most
visible of many arrangements between Internet companies -- including one involving
The New York Times.
The Web site of The
Times includes, on book review pages, links
to Barnesandnoble.com; The Times receives commissions from the resulting
sales.
Of course, off-line retail stores -- including bookstores and groceries -- have long
accepted pay for product placement.
And
being a knowledgeable consumer is important on line as well as off line.
At Time Warner's Pathfinder Network,
Andrew Weil's theories on vitamins and
health are used to create a profile of your
vitamin needs and -- surprise, surprise --
sell you vitamins at the end (cgi.pathfinder
.com/drweil/vitaminprofiler).
Or consider
www.smokefreekids.com, which presents
all kinds of information on smoke-free dining and how to kick the nicotine habit -- and
won't let visitors miss out on the opportunity
to buy No Smoke software to quit smoking.
Even outright spoofs can deceive the unwary Web traveler. Take the case of a site
posted through Mankato State University by
people fed up with the cold winters. The
Mankato, Minn., Home Page advertised
sunny beaches, an underwater city and
whale watching on the Minnesota River
(www.lme.mankato.msus.edu/mankato
/mankato.html). Deep at the bottom of the
disclaimer page one finds: "Mankato, as
portrayed on these pages, DOES NOT EXIST! PLEASE do not come here to see these
sites." Er, sights. (Of course, anybody looking at a map would probably be suspicious
about the site's statement that "the winter
temperature in many Mankato neighborhoods has never dropped below a balmy 70
degrees!")
That Mankato site "has caused some bad
publicity for us," said Maureen Gustafson,
head of the Mankato Area Chamber and
Convention Bureau. "There was a guy who
drove here from Canada with his son who
was really ticked," she said. "And another
one from Kansas."
She wrote the site's creator a letter --
which he later posted, to her dismay --
suggesting that he and his companions go
play with Game Boys rather than undercut
the city's promotional efforts.
Some Web sites appear designed to mislead or even intercept surfers, sometimes
for political reasons. For instance, to
counter what it calls intentionally misleading information, Amnesty International, the
human rights group, has posted www.amnesty.org/tunisia, which includes point-by-point refutations of the site at www
.amnesty-tunisia.org, which Amnesty calls
"official Tunisian Internet propaganda."
The Internet addresses of the pages are, of
course, very close, adding to the confusion.
But most surfers who wanted impartial
information about Tunisia would perhaps
choose not to rely on a site that prominently features a quotation from the president of Tunisia, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
In a medium where truth is so elusive,
medical misinformation is all too easy to
find. Beth Mark, a librarian at Messiah
College in Grantham, Pa., said a friend had
sent her husband, Ken, an article from a
commercial Web site (munkey.com/health
/markle.html) about the health risks of the
artificial sweetener aspartame. Mr. Mark, a
diabetic, had recently suffered a mini-stroke, and he became worried after reading in the
article that aspartame in the
sodas he drinks could cause numbness, a
claim that is generally not supported by
scientific studies, although other questions
have been raised about aspartame.
"It is sensational and contains unfounded
claims regarding aspartame causing symptoms of M.S., numbness, etc.," Mrs. Mark
said of the article, via E-mail.
Soon after, a
senior medical adviser to the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, Dr. David Squillacote,
posted a refutation of the article's claims
(www.msfacts.org/aspartame.htm).
Deborah Cestone, head of the library and
media department at the Pelham Memorial
High School and Middle School in Pelham,
N.Y., teaches students how to evaluate Web
sources for their research papers.
"You'll find sites like the University of
Pennsylvania Cancer Center, and you know
that's good solid information, but then you'll
find a paper done by some 10th grader as a
project, and he's created a Web page from
it," she said.
After all, anyone with an Internet service
provider and a quarter to call it can set up a
Web page that looks as official as a 1040
form, without the quality control that used
to come from editors, fact checkers and
large publishing houses. There are few barriers to bad information on line.
"If you wanted to publish a book that says
2 plus 2 equals 5, you had to go through a lot
of effort and spend a great deal of money,"
said Tara Calishain, co-author of "The Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research"
(International Thomson Publishing, 1998).
"But the cost of putting up a Web page
saying 2 plus 2 equals 5 is virtually nothing."
Genie Tyburski, a law librarian in Philadelphia, runs a site about reliable research
on line (www.virtualchase.com), which includes pointers on how to avoid being duped.
"Many of us who are my age, 41, grew up
trusting print," she said. "If we read it, it
must have been true. We translate that
same comfort to the Web, where it's much
more dangerous."
She recalled a Web site about the medical
uses of marijuana that had been run from a
man's personal home page. It included copies of articles from medical journals but no
mention of permission to reproduce them,
she said.
"With the technology of the Web, there's
no barrier to editing," she said. "An entire
interview reproduced in the article on the
bogus site was not in the original article at
all, and there were graphs to support certain statements that weren't in the original
article."
Rob Rosenberger, a computer security
expert, set up a Web site to dispel myths
about computer viruses (www.kumite.com).
"I just claim to be unaligned, but how
do you know that?" Mr. Rosenberger said in
an interview. To encourage critical thinking,
he has a link on his site titled "Learn About
Rob Before You Start Taking His Advice,"
which dares people to treat his writing with
the same skepticism he brings to virus
scares.
Of course, it is hard to know who is paying
whom for what kind of Internet presence.
"There are the ones we know about, like
Amazon.com, which got caught," Mr. Rosenberger said.
"But there are unscrupulous people in the securities industry who
are trying to pump up or drive down stocks,
to buy at low prices and sell at high prices,
who may not be disclosing their fiduciary
interests."
"People send out spams on the greatest
I.P.O. on the Internet this year, or trash an
I.P.O. that's going to occur, so they can get
in at the low end," Mr. Rosenberger said.
"We know that goes on, too."
Mr. Gilster, the author of "Digital Literacy," said Internet users need to be trained to
triangulate in on the truth.
"We need to set up content evaluation as
part of the intellectual superstructure here
and explain it to kids," he said, "so we end
up with students who can use the Web
intelligently and know when to cast grave
doubt on a particular Web site. People have
to be their own editors and take that upon
themselves. Once you begin doing that, the
habits become second nature."
But some questions about the validity of
Web sources are impossible to answer beyond a reasonable doubt without stepping
outside the hermetic box of the Internet. In
such cases, no combination of pixels is sure
to help.
"When you want to check citations, your
librarian is your best friend," Ms. Calishain
said. "There's a lot of stuff on line, but
working with librarians is one of best things
you can do with research. They're trained to
classify information, and they can help you
out."
It is also true that many librarians are
learning to navigate the world of the Web,
and they may just point an information-hungry consumer elsewhere.
Ms. Cestone, the Pelham school librarian,
said she worked hard teaching students how
to evaluate what might be the best resource
for a given research problem.
"It may be
the Internet is the best resource, or maybe a
book, or maybe a person will be the best
resource," she said.
INFORMATION QUALITY ON THE INTERNET-VERIFIABILITY
THE VIRTUAL CHASE, A RESEARCH SITE FOR LEGAL PROFESSIONAL
WIDENER UNIVERSITY WOLFGRAM MEMORIAL LIBRARY: EVALUATING WEB PAGES
PRACTICAL STEPS IN EVALUATING INTERNET RESOURCES
www.amnesty-tunisia.org
cgi.pathfinder.com/drweil/vitaminprofiler
www.smokefreekids.com
www.lme.mankato.msus.edu/mankato/mankato.html
Amnesty International
munkey.com/health/markle.html
Multiple Sclerosis Foundation
www.virtualchase.com
www.kumite.com |