TL;DR:
Ask who would know first-hand, and go to that primary source instead of the retelling.
Check the date, the author and what the page actually says about the exact claim.
Confirm with a second independent source before you rely on it.
A message in your group chat says a certain kettle was recalled because it can overheat, and you own that kettle. Before you throw it out, tell your family or warn your customers, you want to know whether the claim is true. Search results will give you dozens of pages repeating it. The skill is knowing which page is worth trusting.
Who would know first-hand?
A source is closer to the truth the nearer it is to the event. A primary source is the party that made the decision or took the measurement: the company that issued a recall, the agency that records it, the court that ruled, the lab that ran the test. A secondary source reports on that. Most pages you meet are secondary, and many are copies of copies.
So start by asking who would hold the original record. For a recall, that is usually the manufacturer's own notice and the government body that lists recalls in your country. For a statistic, it is the organization that collected the data. Search for that body directly.
A routine for checking any page
Find the original: Follow links in the article back toward its claim. If an article names a document but gives no link, search for that document by its title. Stop when you reach a page that does not itself cite someone else.
Check the date: Look for the published and updated dates. An old page can be correct for its day and wrong now, and recalls and prices change. If you cannot find a date, treat that as a warning.
Check the details match: Compare the exact specifics: product name, model, serial or batch numbers, region and date range. A recall for one batch is not a recall for every product with the same name.
Look at who is speaking: Who runs the site and what do they gain? A manufacturer's notice is first-hand about its own decision. A seller or an advertiser may leave things out.
Cross-check: Find a second source that got the fact independently, not one that copied the first. Agreement between a company notice and an agency listing is strong. Five blogs copying one headline is one source.
Worked example: checking a claim about a product recall
The claim: "The Brightbrew 2 kettle was recalled in October because it can overheat." Brightbrew is a made-up product. Here is how the routine goes.
Search for the manufacturer's site and the recall list kept by your country's consumer safety agency. In the US, for example, that is the Consumer Product Safety Commission at cpsc.gov. Search both for the product name.
Suppose the agency lists a recall dated October 14 for kettles with model numbers in a certain range and manufacture dates between two months. Read the whole notice, not the headline.
Compare with your kettle. The model number is printed on its base. If yours is outside the stated range, the recall does not cover it, whatever the chat said.
Check the manufacturer's page. If it describes the same fault, dates and remedy, you have two independent records agreeing. Note what the remedy is: repair, replacement or refund.
Compare to the message. The chat said "all Brightbrew 2 kettles", but the notice covers a range. The claim was partly right and too broad.
Notice what changed the answer: the dates and model numbers. A search that stopped at the first news story would have left you with the headline version and the wrong conclusion for your kettle.
Signs a page needs more checking
No author, no date, or no way to contact the publisher.
Strong emotion in place of specifics, or a call to share before checking.
A claim that appears only on pages that copy one another.
Numbers with no source, or a chart with no label of what was measured.
A screenshot of a statement instead of a link to it.
Reading a source for what it actually says
Finding a good source is half the job; the other half is reading the right sentence. Look for the exact claim you are checking, then read the sentences before and after it. A figure can be accurate and still apply to a different group, place or year than the one in the retelling.
Keep a short note for every source you use: what it is, who published it, the date, the link and the one line that supports your point. Five minutes of notes now saves you from searching again when someone asks where you read it.
Mistakes to avoid
Trusting the page that ranks first. Ranking is not a measure of truth.
Reading only the headline or the summary, where the nuance is missing.
Accepting a source because it agrees with what you already believed.
Citing a retelling when the primary source was one click away.
Doing it faster
Keep a note of the original source link next to every claim you plan to use, as described in turning ten articles into a one-page brief. DuckyHelper can see the page you are reading and talk through what it does and does not say when you press fn on a Mac (Ctrl+Shift+Space on Windows and Linux), but you should still open the primary source yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Is Wikipedia a reliable source?
It is a useful map. Use it to find the references at the bottom and check those, rather than citing the summary itself for something important.
What if there is no primary source I can find?
Say so. Report the claim as unverified, name where it appears, and do not present it as fact.
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