Americans To Ban Cloning

Authority

Sponsorship of the page is made clear and there is address and contact information available for the Americans to Ban Cloning (ABC) organization  The sense of authority could be improved by a more thorough description of the group, its membership, and their credentials or qualifications.  However, it is clearly stated that the site design and maintenance is provided by the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and the link to this page gives a clear explanation of that group, its members and speakers, and its purpose.  Some of the site's authority is thus established in a roundabout way, but it is still established.

Content

The scientific information appears credible and could easily be checked against other sources for reliability.  There is no date on the page itself to indicate the last time it was modified but many of the articles it links to are dated within the past few days so it is obviously being updated regularly.  The articles, testimony, and other materials the page links to appear to be well documented with attribution given to sources that appear credible.  Most of the credentials appear to be easy to check if that became necessary.

Viewpoint/Bias

There is a clear bias but the page makes no attempt to hide or disguise it.

Reputation

From the Advanced Search mode in Google, the Page-Specific Search box offers an option to find out what other pages link to a given page.  Typing the address for this page reveals that approximately 95 pages link to this one.  This is not an overly large number but this is a fairly specialized page.  Also, it must be taken into consideration that many of these sites share a similar viewpoint and bias to the ABC coalition.  This is not bad in itself but is a fact in determining objectivity.

Martin Luther King Jr.: A True Historical Examination

Authority

There is no claim of sponsorship or responsibility anywhere on the main page.  There is a link on the bottom of the page labeled Hosted By Stormfront to www.stormfront.com and only when access this can you determine that the page is sponsored by a white supremacy group.  This is actually an improvement over previous versions of the page where the group presented no link to its homepage on the MLK page.  The point here is not that this group is not entitled to a web page.  It has the right to present its views, no matter what others may think of them.  But this one does so in a highly dishonest way.  This page is used as an example of why researchers using web resources must be very vigilant regarding the pages they find.

Content

The information on the home page is deliberately designed to fool a reader into thinking that this is a page honoring Martin Luther King rather than one attacking him.  Again the problem is not the content itself but the deceptive method through which it is presented.  Many of the links are to legitimate sources and many of them are documented but the deceptive methods employed cast suspicion on the entire body of information.  One should be wary of using any of the information, even that which seems well-supported, without checking it against more reliable sources.

Viewpoint/Bias

This becomes obvious once you start examining the second level pages.  A bias itself is not necessarily a bad thing but here there is an attempt to hide it until one is already caught up in the content.  Hiding the true identity of the sponsor makes this doubly deceptive.

Reputation

Using the checking feature in Google reveals that over 2000 other pages link to this one.  Interestingly, though, most of them are other white supremacy sites and many of the rest are other library and information literacy sites that deal with evaluating web sites.