Table of Contents

Introduction
1 Get Quick Context: It Can Take as Little as Thirty Seconds—Seriously!
   The Three Contexts
   “Do I Know What I’m Looking At?”
   Introducing SIFT
   Stop! (Or, How to Fail at Source-Checking Even If You’re the New York Times)
   Investigate the Source
   Find Better Coverage
   Trace Claims, Quotes, and Media to Their Original Context
   Takeaways
2 Cheap Signals: Or, How Not to Get Duped
   Easily Fakeable Questions
   Gameable Signals of Credibility
   First Impressions Matter . . . Except When They Don’t
   URLs Matter . . . Except When They Don’t
   What about Dot-Coms?
      Going Deeper: The “Org” of Dot-Org Is Big Business
   Nonprofit Status: “Nearly Anything Goes”
   Numbers That Bamboozle
   Links That Lead Astray
   Takeaways
3 Google: The Bestie You Thought You Knew
   Interpreting and Mining Search Results
   Why Seeing on the Internet Isn’t Believing
   Decoding Google’s Knowledge Panel
   Different Sources, Different Purposes
      Going Deeper: What Arsonist Birds Teach Us about Different Sources
   When Featured Snippets Get It Wrong
      Going Deeper: Google’s Three Vertical Dots Are a Great Hack for Lateral Reading
   Keywords and Inferred Intent: How to Think like Your Search Engine
   Keywords: The Underlying Architecture of Search
   Inferred Intent: Providing Google with a “Tell”
   Google Is a Mirror Reflecting Back What You Give It
   A Search Engine, Not a “Truth Engine”
   Takeaways
4 Lateral Reading: Using the Web to Read the Web
   Get off the Page!
   Lateral Reading: Checking Information like a Fact-Checker
   Why Lateral Reading Works
   Little Shift, Big Payoff
   Lateral Reading Puts You in Control
   Avoid Promiscuous Clicking: Practice Click Restraint
   The “Vibe” of the Search Engine Results Page
   Takeaways
5 Reading the Room: Benefiting from Expertise When You Have Only a Bit Yourself
   Why You Can’t “Just Do the Math”
   Reading the Room: Quick Assessment of a Range of Expert Views
      Going Deeper: Why We Call This “Reading the Room”
   Trust Compression, or How to Avoid Info-Cynicism
   Reading the Room on the Mask Issue
   The Perils of the Single Academic Contrarian
      Going Deeper: What Makes a Good Summary Source?
   Takeaways
6 Show Me the Evidence: Why Scholarly Sources Are Better than Promotional Materials, Newsletters, and Random Tweets
   What’s Peer Review?
   Peer Review: “The Worst Way to Judge Research, Except for All the Others”
   The Problem of the Single Study
   Literature Reviews: A Bird’s-Eye View of Multiple Studies
      Going Deeper: Journals That Prey on Unsuspecting Victims
   Real History, Fake History: How to Tell the Difference
   Using Google Scholar to Find Scholarly Sources
   The Vibe of Google Scholar’s Results Page
   Using Google Scholar as a Quick Reputation Check
   Takeaways
7 Wikipedia: Not What Your Middle School Teacher Told You
   What about the Mistakes?
      Going Deeper: Wikipedia to Britannica: “He That Is without Sin . . .”
   Anyone Can Change Wikipedia, Can’t They?
   Isn’t Wikipedia Biased?
   Wikipedia as a Tool for Research
   Using Wikipedia to Validate Sources
      Going Deeper: Quickly Validating a Reference from a Book
   Using Wikipedia for Quick Checks of Unfamiliar Websites
   Quick Investigation of a Claim
   Quick Checks of an Unfamiliar Academic Source
   Using Wikipedia to “Read the Scholarly Room”
   Using Wikipedia to Jump-Start Your Research
      Going Deeper: Deciphering the Hieroglyphics of a Bibliographical Reference
   The Messiness of Making Knowledge
   Takeaways
8 Video Games: The Dirty Tricks of Deceptive Video
   False Context
   Exploiting “Seeing Is Believing”
      Going Deeper: Online News Is Often More Credible Than You Think
   Falsely Implied Date
   Connect My Dots, or Creating a False Sense of “Research”
   Deceptively Cropped Video
   Takeaways
9 Stealth Advertising: When Ads Masquerade as News
   The Problem: Stealth Advertising Works
   A Con Is Born
   Newspapers Become Ad Agencies
   The Problem in Three Words: Conflict of Interest
   Disappearing Warning Labels
   Sponsored Propaganda
   Half Truths Are Not Whole Truths
   When Stealth Ads Move to Social Media
      Going Deeper: How Stealth Ads Lose Their Warning Labels
   Protecting Yourself in an Age of Slimy Advertising
   Takeaways
10 Once More with Feeling: Using Your Emotions to Find the Truth
   Emotion Doesn’t Know the Truth, But It Knows What You Care About
      Going Deeper: Man versus Machine
   “Compellingness” Tells Us What’s Important to Check
   Surprise Is a Sign Our Assumptions Might Be Wrong
   Why Compellingness and Surprise Beat the Checklist
      Going Deeper: Mutant Flowers
   Feeling Overwhelmed? Rethink Your Approach
   Takeaways
11 Conclusion: Critical Ignoring
Postscript: Large Language Models, ChatGPT, and the Future of Verification
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Mike Caulfield is a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, where he studies the spread of online rumors and misinformation. Creator of the SIFT methodology, he has taught thousands of teachers and students how to verify claims and sources through his workshops. Sam Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education, Emeritus, at Stanford University, and the founder of the Stanford History Education Group, whose state-of-the-art curriculum on digital literacy has been distributed freely to schools all over the world. He is the author of Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone), also published by the University of Chicago Press.
 

Reviews

"To the novice researcher, Verified serves as a sympathetic and accessible guide to those who feel overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of the modern information machine. For researchers, academics, librarians, and students who are already SIFT adherents, the book provides context and examples in spades, which help explain why the approach makes sense."
*College and Research Libraries*

“Lively and pithy, suitable for students. . . . Engaging, insightful, and useful.”
*American Biology Teacher*

"Fortunately, a new book from two leading academics has arrived to help arm us against the flood of deliberate attempts to sow distrust and separate us from our own senses of what’s real and not.”
*Chicago Tribune*

“A much-anticipated book by two leading experts of the field, Verified goes beyond defining the problem and offers readers clear advice on how to navigate a world of spin, trolls, and lies. Wonderful to see this guide published!”
*Maria Ressa, winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for work to safeguard freedom of expression*

“Verified is the book and mindset that society needs right now. This is, of course, assuming that you want society to survive."
*Guy Kawasaki, Host of "Remarkable People and author of The Art of the Start*

“As the value of information literacy becomes increasingly clear, Verified offers timely, research-based solutions to the ever-present and elusive problem of misinformation run amok.” 
*Daniel Willingham, Professor of Psychology, University of Virginia, author of Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning is Hard and How You Can Make it Easy*

"Verified is a sorely needed intervention into today’s chaotic, often deceitful, information environment of influencers, ChatGPT, deepfakes, viral videos, and distrust. Offering ways to combat the mindset of knee-jerk cynicism, it responds to a world in which political power, not truth seeking, has too often become the ultimate arbiter of truth. Verified will be a treasured resource for debunking internet disinformation to instructors, students, and for you (to hand to parents and skeptics)."
*André Brock, author of Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures*

“An indispensable guide for students and citizens of all ages and backgrounds.”
*Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University, and author of The End of History and the Last Man and Liberalism and its Discontents*

“This book should be required reading for students, journalists, content creators, and anyone else who regularly consumes and shares information (i.e. pretty much everyone). Rich with actionable guidance and real-world examples, Verified helps readers learn the skills to stay out of the weeds of online misinformation and find the best available evidence for any claim. I’m so grateful to Caulfield and Wineburg for creating this resource.”
*Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, author of The Wellness Trap*

“Verified offers an ethos that can help all of us understand and confidently use what we find online. This book belongs in every backpack, classroom, library, workplace, and home.”
*Phillip Jones, Grinnell College Libraries*

“Verified does more than preach against the dangers of misinformation and online mischief, it provides clear, focused strategies for navigating and researching online that should become part of every literate person’s repertoire of skills. Every educator whose students touch the web—which is to say all of us—needs this book.”
*Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, Executive Director, National Writing Project*

“Verified is a lifeline. With research-verified and surprisingly simple techniques, the authors show us, step-by-step, how to sift the real, useful, true information from the tsunami of online bogosity. Read it, give it to parents and their high school-age children, give it as high school graduation gifts, and please teach it at colleges and universities.”
*Howard Rheingold, internet futurist and author of "Net Smart: How to Thrive Online"*

“Anyone who wants to avoid being duped by all the fake news, distorted videos, and stealth ads that populate today's online universe needs this book. Verified offers a multitude of user-friendly tools for navigating our digital new world in which we cannot always trust the seemingly trustworthy sources we encounter.” 
*Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, authors of "They Say, I Say"*

 
“The internet accelerated the spread of misinformation but has also given us veritable superpowers for vetting the information that we encounter. This is the genius of Caulfield and Wineburg’s approach. We don’t have to be passive dupes of online misinformation. We can use the wonders of an online world to become better information consumers than ever before.”
*Carl Bergstrom, coauthor, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World*

 “Caulfield and Wineburg have gone remarkably deep into how our children—and all the rest of us in America—think and learn. At the moment we are losing the battle against ignorance and misplaced assumptions, but this wonderfully written book could save us. Among many wise pieces of advice, they recommend we not only be critical thinkers, but savvy critical IGNORERS. That means learning how to detect crappy sources of information quickly and efficiently. We all need to read this.”
*Jay Mathews, education journalist*

“Under a deluge of disinformation and conspiracism, our modern world faces an epistemological crisis— an inability to parse reality from fiction, truth from lies. Verified offers readers the invaluable tools they need to navigate the flood; to regain clarity and attachment to the real world of facts, logic, and reason; and to restore the foundations of democratic discourse. It's essential reading for our chaotic times.”
*David Neiwert, author of The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right's Assault on American Democracy*

“With humor, clarity, and real-world examples, the authors illustrate both simple and nuanced strategies for making sense of an increasingly complex digital realm. Students, everyday citizens, and educators at all levels will find their varied examples relevant and applicable.”
*Andrea Baer and Daniel Kipnis, Librarians at Rowan University*

“As the value of information literacy becomes increasingly clear to society at large, Verified offers timely, research-based solutions to the ever-present and often elusive problem of misinformation run amok.”
*Rob Detmering and Amber Willenborg, University of Louisville*

“Verified will help librarians, students, and anyone else move beyond well-meaning but oversimplified checklists to be better at sifting the wheat from the chaff when looking for good information online.”
*Brad Sietz, Director LOEX*