Module5: Searchpath. Chabot Library Tutorial.

Explanation

A. Smoking and Health
For the first pair, we will give you a more detailed analysis. For the second group, we will ask you questions, and the third, just give an overall analysis. Regardless, be sure to take another look at all sites after reading our analyses.

1. The Harmful Effects of Smoking
http://www.smartlink.net/~phillipj/smoking.htm

By looking at the URL, you see the tilde before a username: ~phillipj , so before you even look at the web site, you know you will be looking at a personal page. What you have in front of you is a science project from a seventh grader. As interesting and innovative as the young man's project is, the level of expertise is not the same as a renowned scientist, even if he really did earn the first place ribbon at a science fair as the web site claims. For his credit, Jonathan Dallas Johnson did provide a list of Works Cited at the end of the experiment (labeled as a "Bibliography"). The sources used are mixed. There is a government document and sites from renowned agencies, but also sites from unknown authors and a bulletin board web site, which are not as reliable or credible.

The header contains a biblical quote which would not be appropriate for a formal experiment. The footer has a link titled "Click Here to visit my Dad's Web Site." The link leads to Jonathan Johnson's father's web page, (Philip Johnson) who on further study of the home page and other pages about him, claims to be a church theologian. Considering the many formal experiments you could find not only on the Web, but on EBSCOHost Health databases, would this be a site you would select for research?

Back in 2001, a student found this site and was ready to use it for her informative speech. She selected it because it was the first one listed in her Google results. After further consultation with a librarian, she selected the third site listed (the one listed on the right), and also selected some articles from EBSCOhost.

2. The Irreversible Health Effects of Cigarette Smoking
http://www.acsh.org/publications/booklets/iesmoke.html

By looking at the URL, you can tell that the web site is coming from a non-profit organization. The ACSH is the American Council of Science and Health and if you click on the "About ACSH" link you would learn that it is a Consumer Advocate site that has a board of 350 physicians, scientists and policy advisors. The article, itself, is written by Paul H. Brodish who has a MSPH degree which would stand for a Masters of Science in Public Health, if you looked up the acronym. Unfortunately, the site does not delve further to state what Brodish does for a living and other details of his credentials. A quick web search on him, however, would reveal him to be currently an Associate Research Scientist and a member of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation: http://www.pire.org/detail.asp?core=178. There, you would learn he now has "15 years of science and research experience" (written in 2007, meaning he had six years of such experience at the time of the publication of this document in 1998).

Going back to the page on smoking-- the summary, by itself, would not be sufficient for your research, but there is a link to an eleven page PDF report on the right. The PDF document is the entire report , which contains an extensive overview on the effects of smoking on different organs and parts of the human body, and includes a long list of references at the end of the report.

The report is mainly weak in the area of currency, published in 1998 (it was fine for the student back in 2001, but now it is dated). Likely, you can find a much more up-to-date report on this subject as health science research is on-going, and you would like to find the most up-to-date research, whenever possible. While the non-profit organization certainly has a bias in its spirit of consumer advocacy, and Brodish himself uses words to describe smoking as a "deadly behavior" and the choice to smoke or to choose not to quit to be "foolish," Brodish does do thorough research and the resources he used come from reputable government and non-profit agencies, as well as scholarly journal articles.