Africa Growth Pilot/Online self-paced course/Module 4/Exercise - Is this a reliable source part 2

What about citing an artist's blog for the sales figures of that artist's albums? Can we cite that? The answer is no. We cannot cite sales figures from the artist himself or herself. The artist has an obvious interest in promotion, in inflating their sales figures. We definitely cannot trust sales figures reported by the artist. We need another source for sales figures: from shops, from surveys, from something else, but not the artist.

What about a politician's official website for her date of birth? Can we cite that? Yes, I think we can. I think we can. We can usually take people's word about their date of birth. Although we do know on some occasions people lie about their date of birth, to make themselves look younger, usually, occasionally older, because they somehow want to create the impression they weren't a certain age when something happened. But generally, generally we can take people at their word about their date of birth, unless we have good reason to think otherwise. So, yes, we can cite a politician's own website for her date of birth; if we have a better source that is more independent, that would be better.

By the way, there have been cases where we cited a reliable source about someone's date of birth, and then that someone complained that this wasn't their date of birth, and we said, "but that's what it says here in this reliable newspaper". And the person said, "but that's not my date of birth! the newspaper got it wrong!" And that was a problem.

We needed a source, a different source, to go against what the newspaper said. Now, it's not that we think newspapers never make mistakes. Of course they do! But we need some proof that it's a mistake. "Well," the person said, "isn't my word good enough?" And the answer is: no. No. If we have a source that talks about your date of birth and you just say that that's not true, that is not good enough. And it's awkward and it's embarrassing, but we cannot just remove it because you said so.

So that person actually wrote an open letter to the New Yorker magazine, where he complained about this and told the story and everything, and that magazine actually checked it and published it. And ironically, that became the source that Wikipedia used in order to change the date of birth to the date that the person was claiming.

By the way, there have been people who literally sent Wikipedia a scanned copy of their birth certificate in order to prove that what some newspaper said was wrong. That's a reliable source. We can use that!

There were questions here: "most universities restrict referencing Wikipedia as a source of information. What are your thoughts on that?" Well, you have heard me say several times that Wikipedia should not be considered a reliable source. So I absolutely agree with your university. Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source of information. Wikipedia itself tells you that, by providing these little citations it says, "hey, don't believe me? This is where I took it from. Go check!" So you as a student, convenient though it is to just copy from Wikipedia should not do that. If you want to repeat something that Wikipedia told you, go and cite the source that Wikipedia cites, in your paper. It is absolutely correct to not rely on Wikipedia as a source.

Another question: "when there are two sources reporting two different birth dates, what should the editor do?" If the two sources with conflicting dates of birth -- and that happens -- if they are of more or less equal reliability, they're just different dates. And we cannot establish it one way or the other; we cannot, say, ask the person, and we don't have access to their birth records -- we literally have two reliable sources with two different answers.

We do what we do in the case of controversy: We take a step back, and we say "the precise date of birth of this person is unknown; there are sources indicating, say, April 7th, and other sources indicating April 9th". And we cite both of these sources. That's the best service we can do for the Wikipedia reader. We can literally say, nobody knows; sources disagree; here's one source; here's the other source; you make up your mind! That's the best we can do. We cannot tell you which is a fact and which is not.

Next exercise: can we cite a politician's official website for that politician's accomplishments and work for his constituency? Can we cite that? No. Absolutely not. Again, because the politician has every interest to inflate and exaggerate and even invent things, we absolutely cannot take a politician at their word for things they have accomplished or done, and if they have indeed accomplished and done things, those should be documented elsewhere -- by the media, by news, by the constituency that ostensibly he did all these things for. We should be able to find other ways of describing that politician's achievements -- which may be real! -- but we should establish them not through the politician's own word.

Can we cite the Lagos Times for a decision made by the Lagos State? Yes. Yes, we can. The Lagos Times is a generally reliable newspaper and if it's reporting about legislation and decisions made by Lagos State, it is generally a reliable source.

What about citing the Lagos Times lifestyle section, for proving the efficacy of diet pills? Can we cite that? No. Why not? It's the same Lagos Times! Because again, the Lagos Times is not 100% reliable or 100% unreliable. It depends! it depends on the context, and it depends on the genre of writing. The Lagos Times includes news reporting, which is generally reliable, but it also includes a lifestyle section which, like every other lifestyle section in the world, is basically full of advertising and very little facts. Advertising and opinions and very little facts. So if a diet pill really is effective, we would expect to establish that with medical research, not with the lifestyle section of the Lagos Times, or any other newspaper. If you want to claim with Wikipedia's voice that a diet pill works -- and by the way, if any diet pills worked in the world, we would have noticed. Clearly, none of them work -- but if a diet pill really worked, we would expect medical sources to show us that. I'm trying to show you how that the type of information I'm trying to establish determines whether I can use a particular source.