Traditional-age students are digital natives. Professors are trained researchers. Neither of those qualities, though, prevents people from falling for misinformation online.
That’s one finding from a memorable study, released as a working paper in 2017, that documented how three groups of “experts” — among them historians and Stanford University undergraduates — evaluated online sources. Members of both groups tended to dig into a site, according to the study, by Sam Wineburg, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, and Sarah McGrew, his doctoral student. The students and historians followed many of the tips that students are usually given for conducting online research, like examining a site’s domain name. But the tactics didn’t work.