Establishing Credibility and Authenticity: key skills for Life

The most interesting part of researching and writing an EPQ is digging into an academic field in detail to find hidden "treasure". When it comes to writing the report, you may be a "natural" at writing (unlike me), or like me, you try your best to apply the standard rules of English (in our case) to produce a logical and well organised document. However, one of the fundamentally important aspects of any research report (or any factual publication, news report or TV documentary etc) is to be able you say that you "got your facts right". If your chemistry teacher says that sodium has a higher atomic weight than potassium, you write it down without a second thought. If the TV announcer says that your favourite programme will begin an hour later than usual, you feel like you should check to see if he/she is correct; just in case you miss it. You might check online, just to be sure. This is called verifying a fact and it is a critical part of any academic writing or broadcasting. But why do we do it sometimes and not others. Well simply, it depends on the importance to us, of being correct. 

In academic writing, a piece of work stands or falls on the quality and accuracy of its sources. In the world of invention, where the currency may be filing a "patent", the patent office will check to make sure there are no earlier patents that have already claimed a similar invention. This is referred to as "prior art" and is the term used by patent lawyers to ensure the invention is novel: a key element of a patented invention.

When you write that "most people in the UK own a mobile phone", it sounds believable. Maybe you are the new Prime minister trying to raise taxes from mobile phone owners to help pay towards the NHS. Then you think, how many people are over say 20 (the age when most people start paying taxes) and how many people are over 65 (many of whom, don't pay taxes) but who may have a mobile phone? Now you see why you need to verify the information. I consulted the Industry Regulator's web site (Ofcom), who regularly survey providers and phone users. In August 2018, they reported that 78% of all adults own a smartphone. There are around 16m people under 20 in the UK, and the population is around 60m, then Ofcom quote that 78% of 44m adults own a mobile phone. Finally since only 16m out of 60m are 65+, you can see that the proportion of adults who own a mobile phone and who are also eligible for taxation, needs to be verified carefully. Even though 78% of adults own mobile phones, only 50% approximately, will be tax payers. And so it goes on: the reliability of the information should be directly linked to the application of that information: if it is critical information: it must be reliable.

You may ask, why do I "trust" Ofcom's data? I would say that primarily because it is a government regulated authority, which immediately gives me confidence in its authenticity. But maybe I do not completely trust in the data. I would really like to be able to verify the data using another reliable organisation. It might be the results of a survey of users carried out by University researchers: where they have no "vested interest" in the outcome of the survey. It probably would not be the association of mobile phone suppliers, who might want to "accentuate the positive: eliminate the negative" as the American songwriter, Johhnny Mercer once wrote! Where possible "get a second opinion" and use sources other than individuals, unless they have a good track record in their field.

It is not easy to validate completely, but you should try your best. Basing your ideas or conclusions on a single publication or source, which is not corroborated by other papers or sources, is a risky strategy. It is always good to see how many times a paper or resource has been "cited". This is not totally reliable, but it improves the confidence in the source. Reputable sources include learned journals (eg Nature, Scientific American or the Biochemical Journal etc.) and professional organisations and societies. Newspapers are NOT reliable: if you cite them, always check the primary source of the information: a good newspaper will cite this. 

These are the processes you need to comment on when you cite a source. You can come up with a shorthand to indicate how a source was validated: but I'll let you devise one of your own.