PHL 195 Bailey W25: Science information online

Guide that accompanies community based learning project on carbon offsets

Find reliable science information online

A web search on a science topic will likely retrieve some high-quality information on your question. It may also retrieve lower-quality information intended to sell you something or influence your beliefs, sensational factoids, articles constructed by AI bots, etc. 

For example, If you search the web for "fracking", your results will include pages from industry groups that profit from hydraulic fracturing and from environment advocacy groups that are working to ban the practice.  These are both useful information sources to see the different perspectives on the issue.  However, while these websites may provide links to research reports and studies, be aware that these were likely "cherry picked" to support particular perspectives.

Good sources for more objective, credible science research on the web are described below:  government agencies, university websites, and Google Scholar. 

Unless you know that a site is reliable, take the time to evaluate the sources.  See Evaluating sources (from PCC Library). 

 

Government Agency Websites

Government agencies such as NASA and the EPA conduct substantial scientific research, much of which is freely available online.  You can limit a web search to government sources by adding site:gov to a web search.  For example,
search box reading "carbon offsets site:gov"

Here are some recommended government agencies useful for researching environmental issues.

Find peer reviewed research on the web

Find research articles on the web at scholar.google.com.  Not all of the articles will be peer reviewed, but the quality will be much higher than from an ordinary Google search. 

University websites

Colleges and universities also conduct substantial scientific research, often funded by grants from government agencies.

You can add site:edu to your search to limit your results to education sites. 

 


However, .edu sites include all levels of education, so you need to confirm that the information you want to use comes a respected college or university.  Here are examples of university websites useful for research on environmental issues.