Week 12 · Readings & resources

Week 12 — Readings & Resources

Critical Thinking Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 12 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 40–49 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–20 min total)

① Who has earned your trust: expertise, stake, and evidence

Chapter 12, Section “Ask four questions: what makes a source credible” · Session 1, Segment 1, “Four questions for any source” · Remember: ask whether the source knows this field, has a record of getting things right, gains nothing from your belief, and shows its evidence.

False Authority: When People Rely on the Wrong Experts — Effectiviology — an explainer that sorts weak authorities into four kinds, from irrelevant credentials to none at all, and opens with an actor promoting a medical product, close to the chapter's actor passage; read through the examples section and skip the rest. This builds on Week 7's work with the appeal to authority. (reading, 6–9 min)
Getting the Goods on Health and Science — MediaSmarts — a two-minute guide from a media-literacy charity on checking whether a health or science source is an authority on the topic, whether it is selling something, and whether its evidence holds up. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)
How to ask for evidence — Sense about Science — a science charity's short guide to asking a company or a writer to show the evidence behind a claim, with the questions to ask about a health product's testing; read the sections on companies and on what to ask. (reading, 4–6 min)

② Follow the claim back, and leave the page first

Chapter 12, Section “Trace the claim: primary and secondary sources” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Trace the claim to where it started” · Remember: each retelling can change a claim, so find the original record and check what independent sources say about who is behind a page.

Evaluating Sources & Fact Checking: Crash Course Scientific Thinking #6 — CrashCourse — a ten-minute episode that follows a viral claim about eating plastic from a news story back to an advocacy group's report and then to the study, where the figure turns out to be the top of a wide range; listen for primary, secondary, and the moves for checking a source. (video, 10 min) (captions: creator)
How to Fact-Check Online Sources — MediaSmarts — a two-minute set of habits for checking who is behind a page, cross-searching names and web addresses, and checking dates before you trust what you read. Use it while working through the Week-12 module overview. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)
Evaluating Health Information — MedlinePlus — a federal health library's page of questions to ask any health website: who runs it, why it exists, who pays for it, and where its information comes from; read the summary and the list of questions. (reading, 4–6 min)

③ Check the original, and verify what AI hands you

Chapter 12, Section “Verify what AI hands you: fabricated citations and cloned voices” · Session 2, Segment 5, “Verify what AI hands you” · Remember: a real picture can carry a false caption, a neat citation can point to nothing, and a familiar voice is checked by calling back on a number you know.

You’ve Been Misled by This Iceberg Image — Debunkify 101 — a short explainer on a famous iceberg picture that was made as artwork and later shared with a false caption claiming it was a real photo taken near a drilling rig; compare it with the chapter's re-captioned flood photo. (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic)
ChatGPT Generates Fake References: 8 Tips for Editors, Reviewers, and Teachers — Medical Education Flamingo — a four-minute walk through a real journal submission whose references were invented by a chatbot, with tips for spotting a citation that does not exist, such as checking identifiers and searching a sample of references. Stop here before testability and controlled tests; next week takes those up. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
How to avoid phone scams that use AI-voice cloning — TODAY — a four-minute news report on calls that use a cloned voice to fake a family emergency, which cites the Federal Trade Commission's warning and ends with ways to verify the caller, including having someone call the person's real number. Its survey and dollar figures are the reporters' own, not this course's; no quiz uses them. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Scammers use AI to enhance their family emergency schemes — Federal Trade Commission — the federal consumer agency's 2023 alert on voice cloning, the real case this week teaches in words; it is short, and its advice on calling back on a number you know is the part to keep. (reading, 2–4 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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