Science is a very specific way of learning, or knowing, about the world. Humans have used the process of science to learn a huge amount about the way the natural world works. Science is responsible for amazing innovations in medicine, hygiene, and technology. There are however, areas of knowledge and human experience that the methods of science cannot be applied to. These include such things as answering purely moral questions, aesthetic questions, or what can be generally categorized as spiritual questions. Science has cannot investigate these areas because they are outside the realm of material phenomena, the phenomena of matter and energy, and cannot be observed and measured.

Since this is a biology class, we will be focusing on questions that can be answered scientifically. Remember that in the scientific process, observations lead to questions. A scientific question is one that can be answered by using the process of science (testing hypotheses, making observations about the natural world, designing experiments).

Sometimes you will directly make observations yourself about the natural world that lead you to ask scientific questions, other times you might hear or read something that leads you to ask a question. Regardless of how you make your initial observation, you will want to do research about your topic before you start setting up an experiment. When you’re learning about a topic, it’s important to use credible sources of information.

Types of Sources

Whether conducting research in the social sciences, humanities (especially history), arts, or natural sciences, the ability to distinguish between primary and secondary source material is essential. Basically, this distinction illustrates the degree to which the author of a piece is removed from the actual event being described. This means whether the author is reporting information first hand (or is first to record these immediately following an event), or conveying the experiences and opinions of others—that is, second hand. In biology, the distinction would be between the person (or people) who conducted the research and someone who didn’t actually do the research, but is merely reporting on it.

Primary sources

These are contemporary accounts of an event, written by someone who experienced or witnessed the event in question. In general, these original documents (i.e., they are not about another document or account) are often diaries, letters, memoirs, journals, speeches, manuscripts, interviews, photographs, audio or video recordings, or original literary or theatrical works.

In science, a “primary source” or the “primary literature” refers to the original publication of a scientist’s new data, results, and conclusions. These articles are written for other experts in a specific scientific field.

You’ve probably done a writing assignment or other project during which you have participated in a peer review process. During this process, your project was critiqued and evaluated by people of similar competence to yourself (your peers). This gave you feedback on which to improve your work. Scientific articles typically go through a peer review process before they are published in an academic journal. In this case, the peers who are reviewing the article are other experts in the specific field about which the paper is written. This allows other scientists to critique experimental design, data, and conclusions before that information is published in an academic journal. Often, the scientists who did the experiment and who are trying to publish it are required to do additional work or edit their paper before it is published. The goal of the scientific peer review process is to ensure that published primary articles contain the best possible science.

Secondary sources

The function of a secondary source is to interpret the primary source. A secondary source can be described as at least one step removed from the event or phenomenon under review. Secondary source materials interpret, assign value to, conjecture upon, and draw conclusions about the events reported in primary sources. These are usually in the form of published works such as magazine articles or books, but may include radio or television documentaries, or conference proceedings.

Popular vs. Scholarly Sources

 In science, it is often extremely difficult to read and understand primary articles unless you are an expert in that specific scientific field. Secondary sources are typically easier to read and can give you the important information from a primary source, but only if the secondary source has interpreted the information correctly! It is always better to go to the primary source if possible because otherwise you are relying on someone else’s interpretation of the information. However, it is always better to use a source that you can read and understand rather than a source that you can’t. For this reason, it is very important to be able to identify credible secondary sources.

Evaluating Credibility

When you write a scientific paper (or any paper, really), you want to back up your statements with credible sources. You will need to identify credible sources to help you research scientific topics to help you develop interesting scientific questions. You will also need sources to help you form a well-educated hypothesis that is not just based on your guess about what will happen. A credible source is one that is trustworthy from which the information can be believed. Credible sources are written by people who are experts in the field (or at least are very knowledgeable) about the subject that they are commenting on.

We will be using a variation of the CRAAP test to help you determine whether or not sources that you find are credible or not. The CRAAP Test was created by Sarah Blakeslee, of the University of California at Chico’s Meriam Library. It is adapted below. When evaluating the credibility of sources using this method, if it’s CRAAP, it’s good!

You can use the table below to help you evaluate the credibility of your sources.

Credibility Table

In general, do not use a source if it doesn’t pass the CRAAP test! For our purposes, do not use any sources that score less than 6 points using the credibility table.

Several examples are given below for sources that you might come across if you were researching the topic of vaccine safety.

Example 1:

CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Aug 28, 2015. Vaccine Safety [Internet]. [cited May 12, 2016]. Available from: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html

Example 2:

Stop Mandatory Vaccination. N.d.. The Dangers of Vaccines and Vaccinations [Internet]. [cited May 12, 2016]. Available from: http://www.stopmandatoryvaccination.com/vaccine-dangers/

 Sources

“Distinguish Between Primary and Secondary Sources” by University of California, Santa Cruz, University Library is licensed under CC BY 3.0

“Distinguish between Popular and Scholarly Journals” by University of California, Santa Cruz, University Library is licensed under CC BY 3.0