• Question: are the science results you find on the internet accurate?

    Asked by anon-227035 to William, Thibaut "Tibo", Harry, Georgia, Emily, Aimee on 13 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Aimee Egglestone

      Aimee Egglestone answered on 13 Nov 2019:

      Sometimes – Depending on where you get them they can be totally accurate or not at all accurate. The best way to be sure is to look at only verified sources, or look into multiple sources to find as many which agree as possible – that’s probably a safe one to go with!

    • Photo: Georgia Orton

      Georgia Orton answered on 13 Nov 2019:

      Great question. It really depends on where you are looking. The internet is a great resource but unfortunately there’s a lot of rubbish on it too! As Aimee says, you need to be looking at trusted resources, ideally ones which reference the original scientific findings. I have personally found that ‘science’ on social media is often highly questionable. It’s always good to question reliability.

    • Photo: Thibaut Deviese

      Thibaut Deviese answered on 13 Nov 2019:

      Hi! This is a very good question. Some are accurate and some are not. We always need to be careful and compare information from different sources.

    • Photo: William Wiseman

      William Wiseman answered on 14 Nov 2019:

      It can be very misleading sometimes. We would stick to verified sources to make sure what we are reading is correct.

    • Photo: Emily Sparkes

      Emily Sparkes answered on 18 Nov 2019:

      As the others have said, it depends where you look! Wikipedia, not so reliable. Web of Science, more reliable. However you should always be critical of scientific information on the internet and ask yourself who wrote it, why, whether they had any conflicting interests, etc etc. I’ve read papers that have definitely fudged their results as their experiments haven’t worked when I’ve tried them! Sometimes small things are crucial- room temperature in Russia might be very different to room temperature in Brazil!

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