Mike Caulfield is a research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, where he studies the spread of online rumors and misinformation. Creator of the SIFT methodology, he has taught thousands of teachers and students how to verify claims and sources through his workshops. Sam Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education, Emeritus, at Stanford University, and the founder of the Stanford History Education Group, whose state-of-the-art curriculum on digital literacy has been distributed freely to schools all over the world. He is the author of Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone), also published by the University of Chicago Press.

• Introduction1 Get Quick Context: It Can Take as Little as Thirty Seconds—Seriously!The Three Contexts“Do I Know What I’m Looking At?”Introducing SIFTStop! (Or, How to Fail at Source-Checking Even If You’re the New York Times)Investigate the SourceFind Better CoverageTrace Claims, Quotes, and Media to Their Original ContextTakeaways2 Cheap Signals: Or, How Not to Get DupedEasily Fakeable QuestionsGameable Signals of CredibilityFirst Impressions Matter . . . Except When They Don’tURLs Matter . . . Except When They Don’tWhat about Dot-Coms?Going Deeper: The “Org” of Dot-Org Is Big BusinessNonprofit Status: “Nearly Anything Goes”Numbers That BamboozleLinks That Lead AstrayTakeaways3 Google: The Bestie You Thought You KnewInterpreting and Mining Search ResultsWhy Seeing on the Internet Isn’t BelievingDecoding Google’s Knowledge PanelDifferent Sources, Different PurposesGoing Deeper: What Arsonist Birds Teach Us about Different SourcesWhen Featured Snippets Get It WrongGoing Deeper: Google’s Three Vertical Dots Are a Great Hack for Lateral ReadingKeywords and Inferred Intent: How to Think like Your Search EngineKeywords: The Underlying Architecture of SearchInferred Intent: Providing Google with a “Tell”Google Is a Mirror Reflecting Back What You Give ItA Search Engine, Not a “Truth Engine”Takeaways4 Lateral Reading: Using the Web to Read the WebGet off the Page!Lateral Reading: Checking Information like a Fact-CheckerWhy Lateral Reading WorksLittle Shift, Big PayoffLateral Reading Puts You in ControlAvoid Promiscuous Clicking: Practice Click RestraintThe “Vibe” of the Search Engine Results PageTakeaways5 Reading the Room: Benefiting from Expertise When You Have Only a Bit YourselfWhy You Can’t “Just Do the Math”Reading the Room: Quick Assessment of a Range of Expert ViewsGoing Deeper: Why We Call This “Reading the Room”Trust Compression, or How to Avoid Info-CynicismReading the Room on the Mask IssueThe Perils of the Single Academic ContrarianGoing Deeper: What Makes a Good Summary Source?Takeaways6 Show Me the Evidence: Why Scholarly Sources Are Better than Promotional Materials, Newsletters, and Random TweetsWhat’s Peer Review?Peer Review: “The Worst Way to Judge Research, Except for All the Others”The Problem of the Single StudyLiterature Reviews: A Bird’s-Eye View of Multiple StudiesGoing Deeper: Journals That Prey on Unsuspecting VictimsReal History, Fake History: How to Tell the DifferenceUsing Google Scholar to Find Scholarly SourcesThe Vibe of Google Scholar’s Results PageUsing Google Scholar as a Quick Reputation CheckTakeaways7 Wikipedia: Not What Your Middle School Teacher Told YouWhat about the Mistakes?Going Deeper: Wikipedia to Britannica: “He That Is without Sin . . .”Anyone Can Change Wikipedia, Can’t They?Isn’t Wikipedia Biased?Wikipedia as a Tool for ResearchUsing Wikipedia to Validate SourcesGoing Deeper: Quickly Validating a Reference from a BookUsing Wikipedia for Quick Checks of Unfamiliar WebsitesQuick Investigation of a ClaimQuick Checks of an Unfamiliar Academic SourceUsing Wikipedia to “Read the Scholarly Room”Using Wikipedia to Jump-Start Your ResearchGoing Deeper: Deciphering the Hieroglyphics of a Bibliographical ReferenceThe Messiness of Making KnowledgeTakeaways8 Video Games: The Dirty Tricks of Deceptive VideoFalse ContextExploiting “Seeing Is Believing”Going Deeper: Online News Is Often More Credible Than You ThinkFalsely Implied DateConnect My Dots, or Creating a False Sense of “Research”Deceptively Cropped VideoTakeaways9 Stealth Advertising: When Ads Masquerade as NewsThe Problem: Stealth Advertising WorksA Con Is BornNewspapers Become Ad AgenciesThe Problem in Three Words: Conflict of InterestDisappearing Warning LabelsSponsored PropagandaHalf Truths Are Not Whole TruthsWhen Stealth Ads Move to Social MediaGoing Deeper: How Stealth Ads Lose Their Warning LabelsProtecting Yourself in an Age of Slimy AdvertisingTakeaways10 Once More with Feeling: Using Your Emotions to Find the TruthEmotion Doesn’t Know the Truth, But It Knows What You Care AboutGoing Deeper: Man versus Machine“Compellingness” Tells Us What’s Important to CheckSurprise Is a Sign Our Assumptions Might Be WrongWhy Compellingness and Surprise Beat the ChecklistGoing Deeper: Mutant FlowersFeeling Overwhelmed? Rethink Your ApproachTakeaways11 Conclusion: Critical IgnoringPostscript: Large Language Models, ChatGPT, and the Future of VerificationAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

"To the novice researcher, Verified serves as a sympathetic and accessible guide to those who feel overwhelmed by the volume and complexity of the modern information machine. For researchers, academics, librarians, and students who are already SIFT adherents, the book provides context and examples in spades, which help explain why the approach makes sense."