Research Guides: Conspiracy Theories: Debunking Conspiracy Thinking

Evaluating Your Sources

As you search, you should evaluate the sources you find. Books, articles, and websites are created by people with a wide range of opinions, education, and purposes for writing. You could also find sources that are outdated, inaccurate, or just not useful for your research.

There are many strategies for evaluating your sources, but one that we as librarians recommend is the SIFT Method. SIFT is an acronym that represents four criteria that should be on your checklist as you read through a source. As you read sources, keep the following things in mind: Stop before you read, Investigate the Source, Find Better Coverage, and Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media back to the Original Context.

The SIFT method was created by Mike Caulfield. All SIFT information on this page is adapted from his materials with a CC BY 4.0 license.

STOP

Be aware of your emotional response to the headline or information in the article. Headlines are often meant to get clicks and will do so by causing the reader to have a strong emotional response. Before sharing, consider:

What you already know about the topic.
What you know about the source. Do you know its reputation?

Don't use the source until you have found out more about its content, its creator, and its publisher.

INVESTIGATE

The quality of your research is determined by the sources you use. Investigate a source by leaving that web page and looking for information about the source elsewhere. Take a moment to look up the author and source publishing the information.

What can you find about the author/website creators?
What is their mission? Any potential conflicts of interest? Would their assessment be biased?
Do they have authority in the area?

FIND

Sometimes it's less important to know about the source and more important to assess their claim. That means we can try and validate the information we're looking at in other sources. This helps to both verify whether the information is true and to find a better, or more trusted, source of coverage.

"Trusted coverage" can mean:

What other coverage is available on the same topic? Most big news stories that are true get covered by multiple major news outlets.
A track record of accurate reporting
A reputation for minimizing bias in reporting

TRACE

Many times the information we encounter is stripped of its context, which can distort its meaning. It's important to trace claims, quotes, and media back to their original source so that you can understand the context and ensure the information is being presented accurately.

Click through the links to follow the claims to the original source of information. Open up the original reporting sources listed in a bibliography if present. Consider:

Does the extracted information support the original claims in the research?
Is information cherry-picked to support an agenda or a bias?
Is information taken out of context?

After you've found the original claim, quote, finding, or news story, ask yourself if it was fairly and accurately represented in the media that you initially came across.

Debunking Conspiracy Theories

The following books are great places to find strategies and tips for combatting conspiracy thinking, hoaxes, frauds, and more.

Bullspotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation (Print Book) by Loren Collins
Publication Date: 2012
This entertaining and educational book applies the tools of critical thinking to identify the common features and trends among misinformation campaigns. With illustrations drawn from conspiracy theorists and deniers of every stripe, the author teaches readers how rumors are started, and the rhetorical techniques and logical fallacies often found in misleading or outright false claims. What distinguishes real conspiracies from conspiracy theories, real science from pseudoscience, and actual history from bogus accounts purporting to be history? How does one evaluate the credibility of rumors and quotes or judge the soundness of legal arguments advanced by tax deniers? Readers will learn how to make these critical distinctions and also how to spot "evidence" that has been manufactured or manipulated in some way to create a false impression.
Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age (Print Book) by Daniel J. Levitin
Publication Date: 2016
It's becoming harder to separate the wheat from the digital chaff. How do we distinguish misinformation, pseudo-facts, and distortions from reliable information? Levitin groups his field guide into two categories--statistical information and faulty arguments--ultimately showing how science is the bedrock of critical thinking. Info literacy means understanding that there are hierarchies of source quality and bias that variously distort our information feeds via every media channel, including social media...Levitin's charming, entertaining, accessible guide can help anyone wake up to a whole lot of things that aren't so. And catch some weasels in their tracks!
Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age: Scientific Habits of Mind (Ebook) by David J. Helfand
Publication Date: 2016
This book is also available in print.
We live in the Information Age, with billions of bytes of data just two swipes away. Yet how much of this is mis- or even disinformation? A lot of it is, and your search engine can't tell the difference. As a result, an avalanche of misinformation threatens to overwhelm the discourse we so desperately need to address complex social problems such as climate change, the food and water crises, biodiversity collapse, and emerging threats to public health. This book provides an inoculation against the misinformation epidemic by cultivating scientific habits of mind. Anyone can do it--indeed, everyone must do it if our species is to survive on this crowded and finite planet.
Web of Deceit: Misinformation and Manipulation in the Age of Social Media (Ebook) by Anne P. Mintz
Publication Date: 2012
This book is also available in print.
Anne P. Mintz brings together a team of expert researchers, journalists, and subject experts to explain how misinformation is intentionally spread and to illuminate the dangers in a range of critical areas. Web of Deceit is a must-read for any internet user who wants to avoid being victimized by liars, thieves, and propagandists in the age of ubiquitous social media.

Internet Resources

Thankfully, there are numerous resources and advice to combat conspiracies and misinformation available online. Many of them are created by librarians and professors who've studied the problem of bad information for a long time.

Calling Bullshit Syllabus
Created by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, professors at the University of Washington, this real course syllabus contains extensive readings that can help you learn to spot and debunk bad information, hoaxes, and conspiracies.
Media Literacy & Misinformation
This guide—created by librarians at Monmouth University—contains numerous resources, tips, and definitions that you can use to become an expert at deciding if information is valid.
Politifact
Created by the Poynter Institute, a journalism non-profit, Politifact is a great resource to find out if that thing that one politician said the other day is actually true.
Snopes
Is something on the internet or in the news real? Look it up on Snopes. The staff of this site have been debunking and fact-checking since 1994.

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