Biotechnology for Health (Biomedical Innovations)

Unit 1: Problem 1: Effective ER DesignBI 1.1Biomedical Innovation: research & information literacy

Evaluate source credibility and bias

Judge whether a source is trustworthy by checking who wrote it, when, and what evidence backs it.

Builds on (2 levels back)inferred · high confidence

Primary vs. secondary source: A primary source reports original data or events firsthand; a secondary source summarizes or comments on it. Credibility starts with knowing which one you are holding.
Telling a fact from an opinion: Before judging bias, you have to separate a checkable claim from a viewpoint, because bias hides in unsupported opinion presented as fact.

Prerequisites are inferred: pending teacher review.

Re-learn the skill with worked practice and clear examples.

Judge a source with four checks: author and expertise, date, evidence behind the claims, and whether it leans one way (bias).

Step 1: Check the author and the date

Find out who wrote it and whether they have real expertise (a credential, a recognized organization). Then check the date: for medical and design information, an old source can be out of date.

Step 2: Check the evidence

A credible source shows where its claims come from: data, citations, or peer review (other experts checked it before publication). A source with strong claims and no evidence is weaker, even if it sounds confident.

Step 3: Check for bias

Bias means the source leans toward one side. Ask who made it and what they gain. A company page selling a product may leave out anything that makes the product look bad: that is bias, even if each sentence is true.

Practice

Your team is designing an emergency room and you find four sources about ER patient flow (see the table). Reading the table, which source passes all four credibility checks (named expert author, recent date, evidence shown, and no one-sided bias)?

Reviewed

Source	Author	Date	Evidence shown
Hospital marketing page	Not listed	2013	None; only praise
Agency public-health report	Named researchers at a public health agency	2023	Cited data set and methods
Anonymous forum post	Anonymous user	2024	A personal story, no data
Medical-device sales flyer	Company sales team	2022	Selected results favoring its product

A.The hospital marketing page
B.The agency public-health report
C.The anonymous forum post
D.The medical-device sales flyer

Show the worked solution ▾

Answer: B. The agency public-health report

Step 1: Run the author check: Read the Author column. Only the agency report and the device flyer name who is responsible; the report's authors are researchers at a public health agency, while the flyer's are a sales team with something to gain. The marketing page and forum post name no real author.
Step 2: Run the date and evidence checks: Read the Date and Evidence columns. The report is dated 2023 and cites a data set and methods. The marketing page is from 2013 with no evidence, and the forum post (2024) offers only one personal story.
Step 3: Run the bias check: The sales flyer shows only results that favor its product, which is biased. Cross-checking the whole table, the agency report is the one row that survives all four checks.

Why it's right: Reading the table, only the agency public-health report has a named expert author, a recent date, cited data, and no one-sided slant, so it is the source that passes all four credibility checks.

Why the others miss:

A: The marketing page lists no author, is from 2013, and shows no evidence, so it fails three of the four checks.
C: The forum post is anonymous and offers only a personal story with no data, so it fails the author and evidence checks.
D: The flyer shows only selected, favorable results: that is biased evidence, so it fails the bias check.

Aligned to Information literacy: evaluating credibility & bias · reading level ~grade 9

Where you'd see this

When researching ER design, a student keeps only sources that name an expert author, are recent, and cite their evidence: and flags the rest as 'use with caution.'

Careers that use this

Epidemiologist: Trusts public-health findings only after checking the authors, the date, and the data behind them.

Video library

Watch: Evaluate source credibility and bias

Evaluating Sources: A CRAAP Test Tutorial/Example

AUPP English Level 7 Q4 · ~10 min

Guided notes

Fill these in as you work through the lesson.

Big idea: A source is more trustworthy when you can check who wrote it, when it was published, and what evidence it gives: and less trustworthy when it leans one way and leaves evidence out.

Key terms: write the meaning

Credibility (how much you can trust it):
Bias (leaning toward one side):
Peer review (experts checked it first):
Primary source (firsthand or original data):

The rule

Before I trust a source I check four things: who the is, the it was published, whether it shows for its claims, and whether it leans toward one side, which is called .

Check yourself

Name two things you would look for on a webpage to decide if its author knows the topic.
How can a source still be biased even if every sentence in it is technically true?
Why does the date on a medical source matter when you are designing an emergency room?

Work one example

You find two pages about ER wait times: one is a hospital's own marketing page from 2014 with no author listed, and one is a 2023 report from a public health agency that lists its authors and links to its data. Decide which is more credible and write down three reasons that prove it from what is shown.