National No Smoking Day - and how do I know which websites to trust?

National No Smoking Day

Yesterday was National No Smoking Day. Several courses include looking at smoking as a topic in their courses and many use websites. I am often asked by students how to tell which websites can be trusted so I thought I’d use this topic as an example.

Smoking and tobacco websites

So…. if you were doing a project on smoking and tobacco, which of the following websites would you trust and use as a good source of information for your assignment? Not all of these are ideal.

www.ash.org.uk  (Action on Smoking and Health – charity)

www.gov.uk/government/policies/smoking   (UK Government website)

www.bmj.com/specialities/smoking  (British Medical Journal)

www.nicorette.co.uk  (company selling products to help give up smoking)

www.niquitin.co.uk  (company selling products to help give up smoking)

www.bhf.org.uk/smoking   (British Heart Foundation)

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/bulletins/adultsmokinghabitsingreatbritain/2015  (Office of National Statistics)

www.blf.org.uk  (British Lung Foundation)

http://www.givingupsmoking.co.uk/  (E-cigarette company)

https://www.nhs.uk/smokefree   (NHS site)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoking  (Online wiki)

How to decide which smoking websites to trust and which can I use in my assignments?

I often ask students if they had a choice between using the NHS site or the Nicorette site, for example, which would they use? 

Most would reply the NHS site and when asked why, would say that Nicorette site want to sell their own products. Therefore they won't give an unbiased or objective view of how to give up smoking. Therefore, I would probably not use this site, even though some of the information may be correct.

www.givingupsmoking.co.uk  is another example where author of the website (which is not very obvious) is promoting e-cigarettes rather than giving a balanced view on smoking and giving up. 

Public domain photo
http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=126056&picture=cigarette-butts

Web extensions

Did you know that .co and .com sites can be set up by anyone. That doesn't mean they can't be trusted but there are no checks. You know you can trust .nhs sites. They are British and must be from an NHS institution. Other trustworthy website extensions are .gov (as in Office Of National Statistics), .org (as in British Heart Foundation) and .ac (a school, college or University like PRC) as these extensions can only be registered to genuine government departments, charities and organisations or academic institutions.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is never a good option for your college work, because anyone can write Wikipedia articles and therefore you cannot tell if the information is trustworthy.

Journal sites

British Medical Journal is a professional journal with articles written for and by GPs, consultants and other medically trained staff.  The content is checked and only qualified people contribute. This site can be trusted – but you might have problems understanding it!

Quitting smoking projects - use the About section

There are lots of different sites for projects promoting giving up smoking and you will notice that a lot of them have a NHS logo on them. This would suggest that the site is approved by the NHS or that they have been working in partnership with them. They can probably be trusted. Read the About section of any website to see who the author of the website is.

With so many good quality sites available, why would you bother with those which may not be so trustworthy or objective? For College work I would concentrate on organisations like charities, the NHS and government websites. PRC Library+also have an e-book on Issues Online about smoking and tobacco - accessible from our Moodle pages.

Whatever you use, remember to put the details of the website in your reference list at the end of your work.