Evaluation of General Sources

Gathering credible and useful sources for a project can be a daunting task.  It is important to go through a set of checks to make sure that a source is okay to use.  In this post I am going to be evaluating two sources related to genetic engineering.

GDJ.  "Alien DNA Helix" 1/10/15 via openclipart.  Unlimited commercial use license.

Source #1:  "Pros and Cons of Genetic Engineering" via Conserve Energy Future.

URL:  The URL for this source is a .com which implies that it is a commercial site.  While this may give the source some credibility issues, the nature of the site (education about being green), makes me believe that the information is credible.

Author:  The author is a guy named Rinkesh Kukreja who is a researcher in the field of conservative energy.

Last Updated:  The post doesn't display when it was last updated, but I can assume that it is relatively recent since the entire site has only been around since 2009.

Purpose:  The purpose for this source is to inform the reader on the pros and cons of genetic engineering.  There doesn't seem to be any other agenda besides spreading knowledge.

Graphics:  There is a picture which is an example of genetic engineering on tomatoes. 

Position on Subject:  The source appears to be non biased because the author is just trying to spread information about genetic engineering.

Links:  The source does provide various links to other sources for further research on the subject of genetic engineering.  

Source #2:  "Exploring Two of Engineering's Most Controversial Ideas" via ImAnEngineer.

URL:  While the URL is a .com, the site is dedicated to engineers and engineering issues that it is safe to assume that the source is most likely credible.

Author:  The source doesn't provide a specific author, but all of the posts on the site are made by engineers.

Last Updated:  The source doesn't provide a specific date, but the source is relatively new because the site has recently been created.

Purpose:  The purpose of the source is to inform the reader about a couple of controversial engineering issues, one of which being genetic engineering.  There doesn't seem to be a specific agenda besides the site's overall goal of getting people to join the ImAnEngineer initiative. 

Graphics:  There are a couple of pictures that simply illustrate engineers in action.

Position on Subject:  Like I previously said, there doesn't seem to be a specific agenda or bias.

Links:  The source does provide ways for the reader to continue learning about the subject as well as other engineering topics.  The one bad thing about the source is that it is lacking citations.  However, the writers of the article are engineers themselves which provides a bit of credibility.