Critical thinking
This topic shows you how to think critically, find hidden contexts and read between the lines
Primary and secondary sources
Critically thinking person also takes into consideration whether information comes from primary or secondary sources.
Primary sources are original published sources, for example medical studies on obesity. Secondary sources can be, for example, report in newspaper, which speaks about the medical study on the obesity and interpret it to the audience by more common, understandable language. And by the interpretation, retelling, there is a space for inaccuracies. Reader should be aware and approach the information from secondary sources cautiously.
It does not mean that we should uncritically accept primary sources. We can always consider whether information in the study is based on evidence or whether there were some other studies with different results.
Credibility of the text is higher when it quotes sources with the name of author, title and year of publishing. In case of the web, reports are often interlinked with the studies, from which they are quoting from. Reader can easily find the original source. If s/he has any doubts on the credibility of the information, s/he can find some other independent sources.