Information Literacy - Group 2 Fadil and Aidan

For this assignment we investigated the accuracy and reliability of an encyclopedia britannica article about ecology. To determine the trustworthiness of the site we first looked at the authorship of the article. The article was authored mainly by two seperate professors, Robert Leo Smith a professor of wildlife biology and ecology from the university of West Virginia and Stuart L. Pimm a professor of conservation ecology from Duke University. While these two authors seem reliability upon further investigation of the article it was discovered that several other authors contributed alongside these professors. These other contributors typically had no other credentials besides ambiguous titles such as “information analyst”, casting doubt upon the accuracy of the article. Alongside this issue of authorship there were few to no references to outside works, such as research or review papers. I would trust this article as much as I would trust a wikipedia page, as there is validity to many of their statements yet authorship is questionable.