It's unfortunate but perhaps it's also a great opportunity to teach the students about media literacy. They (nor we) should believe everything we read/hear. Studies have demonstrated that people use criteria like sites ending in '.org' or '.edu' to be credible sources so people don't examine their content as critically as perhaps they should.
Here's are two good resource with examples. <http://www.ithaca.edu/looksharp/resources_factfiction.php> <http://www.anovember.com/Default.aspx?tabid=150> Here's an example of the pitfalls of believing .org = good quality <http://www.martinlutherking.org/> *** Please note, this material IS offensive. One outfit that I've used to disabuse folks of the notion that .org = high quality is globalclimate.org. The Union of Concerned Scientists has some good background info on them <http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/skeptic- organizations.html>. You can see what their website was like by going here: <http://web.archive.org/web/20011129035719/http://globalclimate.org/> BTW, do you know about the internet wayback machine? <http://web.archive.org/> this is how one can easily find web pages (and sites) that are no longer up. On Sep 1, 2006, at 9:07 AM, Leslie Mertz wrote: > Something is wrong here. When I typed "peppered moths" into Google, > up popped a listing of pages claiming to expose the famed study as > faulty science. Anyone with an understanding of natural selection and > evolution can quickly see through the pages' creationist > underpinnings and find the myriad mistakes in their claims. To the > many people who are still forming opinions about the topics, however, > the sheer number of these web pages -- even though they are mainly > repeats of the same purposely erroneous information -- may lead them > to the wrong conclusion. This includes college students, who will > "google" just about anything and everything. Perhaps we need to use > the same tactics to ensure that the scientifically accurate story is > told. > > ======================= > Leslie Mertz, Ph.D. > educator > Wayne State University
