SIFT Savvy: How to evaluate information like a pro

Fake news. Misinformation. Disinformation. How can you tell if online content is credible?  

Easy-to-use platforms for graphic design and website development allow anyone to create sophisticated, credible-looking digital content. Combine this with AI tools and social media, and misinformation spreads like wildfire.   

As a researcher, how do you stop the fire? You use SIFT.  

SIFT is a method developed by Mike Caulfield, a researcher at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. SIFT stands for: 

Stop 

Investigate the source 

Find better coverage 

Trace claims back to the original source. 

You don't need to follow the SIFT steps in order or use all steps for every source. That’s because SIFT draws from a technique called lateral reading. 

Rather than relying on your gut or a checklist of visual features to determine if a claim or information source is trustworthy, lateral reading goes outside the original source to look at what other reputable sources have to say about it.  

Lateral reading uses sites like Wikipedia, Google, and Snopes to verify the credibility of your source and the accuracy of its claims. 

Now, you might be thinking, “But wait! I was advised against using these sites because they aren't written by experts and may contain false information.” With SIFT, these sites aren’t used sources of information for research, instead, they are used as tools to judge the reliability and credibility of your original source.  

Here’s an example of how this works.  Look at the American College of Pediatricians and the American Academy of Pediatrics websites. At first glance, both sites look equally credible. 

According to a Stanford study, if you relied only on your gut and website appearances, you could be among the 80% of undergraduates and 50% of doctoral historians fooled into thinking that the American College of Pediatricians was a legitimate, credible information source.  

How could lateral reading have prevented you from being fooled? 

The Wikipedia Trick 

In LIB 1600, we teach students to type the word “Wikipedia” at the end of a URL address or organization’s name to access the Wikipedia page for sites they want to evaluate. When you type, “https://acpeds.org Wikipedia” and access the Wikipedia site on the American College of Pediatricians, it says, “ACPeds has been listed as a  hate group  by the  Southern Poverty Law Center  for pushing ‘anti-LGBTQ junk science’.”  

On the other hand, the Wikipedia page for the American Academy of Pediatrics lists that “it is the largest professional association of pediatricians in the United States,” and that it “has published hundreds of policy statements, ranging from advocacy issues to practice recommendations.” 

Using the Wikipedia trick to determine credibility quickly, without having read a single word on either of the websites themselves. But what do you do if there’s no Wikipedia page for your source, or if you find that the Wikipedia page is questionable? Wikipedia isn’t the only strategy you need to know. Our LIB 1600 SIFT module has even more strategies to add to your research toolkit.  

Are you interested in sharing SIFT with your students? Ask your subject librarian to add these pages to your Canvas course.  

Happy researching!