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Opinion
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Data/Facts
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Knowledge/Information
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Empirical Expertise
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We take in and share information in lots of different formats: websites, books, newspapers, magazines, journal articles, conversations, texts, emails, etc...
The combination of these information sources to which we are exposed becomes the sum of what we know about a subject. Each source has the potential to be valuable addition to knowledge of the world around us. Each source also has the potential to be incorrect.
A single information source may be an opinion, raw data or facts, knowledge or information, empirical expertise or even any combination of all four.
For the sake of our investigation let's define just these four:
| Opinion |
A personal point of view. Where is the evidence for this statement?
Example:
"We are EX-VAXXERS who have learned the hard way that we have been lied to, and in many cases harmed How else is one supposed to react to the realisation that one has been deliberately abused in this way? Far too many stories of ‘my child was fine, then he was vaccinated, now he’s not fine’ and the experience of patients and parents can no longer be dismissed as irrelevant to the subject."
Source: Redshaw, M. (2018, May 5). Vaccines don't work. Here are the facts. [Blog post.] Retrieved from https://www.livingwhole.org/vaccines-dont-work-here-are-the-facts/
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Data
Facts |
Raw facts or statistics without analysis.
Example:
Source: Centers for Disease Control (2017). Table 66: Vaccination coverage... Retrieved from: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2017/066.pdf
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Knowledge Information
(Generally a secondary source.)
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Something known as a result of the work of others. The information may come from studies or published results of scientific experiments, but these studies or experiments were not conducted by the author. This is the most common sort of information you'll find. (Secondary Source)
Example:
"Globally, the number of deaths from measles fell dramatically between 2000 and 2010. The Measles and Rubella Initiative, a collaboration between the World Health Organization (WHO) and other groups, reduced the number of global measles deaths by 74 percent between 2000 and 2010. The number of measles cases increased in 2010 and the first half of 2011, however. Experts attribute the spike in number of cases to a number of factors, including continued resistance to the administration of MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccination by some parents. Although now widely discredited, fears apparently continue to linger that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Severe cases of measles result in an estimated 140,000 deaths each year." (pp. 4452-4453)
Source: Vaccine. (2014). In K. L. Lerner & B. W. Lerner (Eds.), The Gale Encyclopedia of Science (5th ed., Vol. 8, pp. 4551-4553). Farmington Hills, MI: Gale. Retrieved from https://link-gale-com.libproxy.plymouth.edu/apps/doc/CX3727802521/GVRL?u=plysc_main&sid=GVRL&xid=1604c10f
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Empirical Expertise
(primary source.)
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Scientifically verified knowledge acquired through personal observation or experimentation and reported by the person or persons who did the observation or who performed the experiment. (primary source)
"Our goal was to examine immunization beliefs and practices to help elucidate this decision-making process by conducting an online survey of families with an ASD-affected child participating in a US autism registry. We hypothesized that among families with an ASD-affected child, maternal education level, geographic region and secular trends, and belief in a vaccine–autism link in an index child’s ASD all influence uptake of the childhood vaccine series among younger siblings.6"
Source:
Rosenberg, R. E., Law, J. K., Anderson, C., Samango-Sprouse, C., & Law, P. A. (2013). Survey of vaccine beliefs and practices among families affected by autism spectrum disorders. Clinical Pediatrics, 52(9), 871–874. https://doi-org.libproxy.plymouth.edu/10.1177/0009922812438435
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