Fact or Fiction

             Fact or fiction that is the question.  How does one decipher a valid article, from a fake one? According to Inc.com, There are a few “red flags” one can look for to find the validity. I will use this checklist to figure out whether the article is legitimate or not. Since most articles are written well enough for the validity to be obvious, it is crucial that one approaches the site with an open mind along with very critical thought.

            For the purposes of this assignment, I have chosen an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association. This article focused on domestic violence. Following the checklist provided by inc.com, I have scanned the site initially, searching for the purpose of the article. The objective of this article is clearing stated within the first three lines, “To determine the incidence, 1-year prevalence, and cumulative prevalence of domestic violence (DV) among female emergency department (ED) patients” (www.jama.com) Since this is clearly a medical journal, it should be clear that nothing is being sold. However, the fact that there are no advertisements on this article at all, it is for certain that this is specifically for research and educational purposes.

            So far, it seems as if this article is completely valid, however we have just a few more checks to make it through to feel confident that this is a resource that can be helpful, not hurtful. Next, we check the author(s). This article clearly shows that this experiment was hosted, performed and written by a group of medical doctors. I have searched each person involved, individually. I also searched for the location. Each individual and facility was verified.

            It should be noted that even something labeled, as an academic journal could prove as false, however, this particular article is proving to be true. Lucky for us.  This domain has not been duplicated and the website (medical journal) has been featured in a number of articles outside of the medical field. The final part of this checklist notes that all references should be checked. Even if the “skeleton” of the story seems to fit, it all relies on the core. That said, the list of references of this article were long, as the doctors did a vast amount of research to form their hypothesis. Even though this article has been highlighted in many other outlets, I found it crucial to the assignment to check each reference.

Each reference came from a legitimate piece of literature, site, or individual. For the purposes of this assignment, as well as the confirmation of the validity of the medical journal, this article is completely valid. I know that for every valid article there is a similar one with information that does not check out.  This reason is why it is important for a web writer to check every piece of work featured on their page. If a something is published on your site, that is not valid, then the traffic that follows your site, will doubt the professionalism and validity of the site your site for highlighting such an article.