The 2030 Claim
Kadeem is finishing a Caribbean Studies project on sargassum seaweed and tourism. His teacher requires at least five sources, at least two published in the last five years, and at least one that reports original data. Kadeem finds: (1) a Facebook post with 41,000 shares saying 'scientists confirm Caribbean beaches will be unusable by 2030'; (2) a travel blog that repeats the post's numbers with no author listed; (3) a satirical news site article titled 'Sargassum Declared New National Dish', dated 1 April; (4) a university press release summarising a 2023 study of 12 beaches; (5) a 2009 newspaper feature about a hotel closure; and (6) a chatbot answer that cites 'Ramlal et al. (2021), Marine Pollution Bulletin 168' - an article Kadeem cannot find anywhere. He plans to open with the 2030 claim because it 'gets attention', and to list all six sources in his bibliography.
1. Assess each of the six items against authority, currency, evidence and purpose, and say which should be used, used with caution, or dropped.
Read the worked answer
(1) Facebook post: drop. No named author, no link to a study, an extreme claim with a round date, and shares are not evidence. (2) Travel blog: drop, or use only as an example of how the claim spread, never as evidence - no author, no date, numbers copied from (1). (3) Satire site: drop. The 1 April date and the headline are the warning signs; satire is not a source even when it looks like one. (4) University press release: use with caution. It is recent and names real researchers, but it summarises someone else's work - find and cite the underlying 2023 study, which is the primary source the teacher asked for. (5) 2009 newspaper feature: usable for historical context only, and it fails the five-year rule for scientific claims. (6) Chatbot citation: drop until verified. A citation that cannot be found is probably fabricated; search the journal, the DOI and the author's name, and if it does not exist, remove it.
Best combination: (4) plus the underlying study, (5) for context, and a government or regional body dataset as the second recent source.
2. Kadeem wants the 2030 claim as his opening line. Advise him on what to write instead and how to handle the chatbot's citation.
Read the worked answer
Use the claim only if he can attribute it and put it in proportion. Do not open with 'scientists confirm beaches will be unusable by 2030'; open with what the evidence actually shows, for example: 'A 2023 study of 12 beaches found that...'. If he wants the viral claim in the project, frame it as a claim under examination: 'A widely shared post states X; the study it is usually linked to actually reports Y.' That keeps the attention-grabbing element without repeating an unverified number as fact.
For the chatbot citation: treat it as a lead, not a source. Search the exact title in Google Scholar and on the journal's own site, check that the DOI resolves, and confirm authors, year and volume. If nothing matches, delete it and note in his process log that the tool produced a citation he could not verify. Never leave an unverified citation in a bibliography - a teacher who checks it will distrust the whole project, including the parts that were sound.