Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineberg. Verified : How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions About What to Believe Online. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2023. 266p. Paper, $14 (ISBN: 978-0-226-82206-8).

Acclaimed economist, political scientist, and computer scientist, Herbert Simon, is quoted by authors Mike Caulfield and Sam Wineberg in the conclusion of Verified : How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions About What to Believe Online and perfectly encapsulates the problem addressed by the book. Simon observed that, “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” (212). Accordingly, Caulfield and Wineberg suggest not always focusing on what to pay attention to, but instead, how to “critically ignore” low-quality information in an effort to save time and mental energy in an online world overloaded with information. Written with humor and abundant in real-world examples, Verified expands upon Caulfield’s popular SIFT approach to evaluating information online and includes tips on identifying common dirty tricks used by purveyors of disinformation and misinformation, strategies for recovering lost context, a primer on peer review and scholarly communication, and an overview on how advertisements insidiously disguise themselves as real news.

Verified begins by introducing SIFT, Caulfield’s updated approach to evaluating information online, introduced in 2017 and now popular with academics and other researchers. SIFT directs internet searchers to Stop, Investigate the source, Find other coverage, and Trace claims to the original context. This approach is practical, intuitive, and effective, but it takes practice to make it second nature. Caulfield, a research scientist and affiliate instructor at the University of Washington Information School’s Center for an Informed Public, and Wineberg, professor emeritus and head of Stanford History Education Group, establish their credibility early, citing studies that evaluate the effectiveness of SIFT and lateral reading. The practice of using the web to evaluate the web has struck a chord with researchers and has been supplanting older methods centered around examining the source itself.

Chapters on Google and Wikipedia discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each tool and advise on how to use both safely. The scholarly conversation around these two ubiquitous and enduring cornerstones of the internet has fostered much debate. Google and other search engines are generally accepted as imperfect tools that require some knowledge of how they work in order to use them effectively. Caulfield and Wineberg integrate insights into click restraint, source types, and establishing search result expectations along with analyses of some of Google’s more recent innovations (e.g., featured snippets) and algorithmic behaviors. The chapter on Wikipedia highlights some of the developments that have allowed the site to evolve from a teacher’s worst enemy to a primary trusted source of information for Google, Siri, and many health care providers. The authors applaud Wikipedia’s utility when performing quick fact checks, verifying the trustworthiness of sources, and identifying major figures, issues, and points of contention on a given topic.

The book concludes with a postscript regarding the recent public release of ChatGPT and, while the authors recognize that they barely had time to get their comments in by their deadline, they include insights that will likely prove valuable in the coming years as artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs) continue to influence the way we write and what we read. They warn us that one of the last hard-to-fake signals of authority, writing style, is in danger of being cheapened by tools like ChatGPT, and they recommend putting more stock in a source’s online reputation. On a more optimistic note, LLMs may make lateral reading easier by providing quick access to more information and filling the gaps between longer, dense sources and short snippets with little context. The timely postscript ends with a warning: LLMs don’t know things, they only remix and repeat what people have said about them online. Before anyone uses text written by an LLM, they should verify all facts and claims, a process that may take longer than the actual composing and writing.

Verified is reinforced by several devices that help make it a useful reference. Plentiful screenshots illustrate red flags on questionable websites and provide context for discussions of things to look for in search result pages. Each chapter ends with a bulleted list of takeaways which, even isolated from the text, serve as useful reminders of things to be mindful of online. The conversational tone of the writing, while persuasive and efficient, describes techniques that may be considered common sense, and it sometimes lacks the textual weight and simplicity of a checklist or the novelty of an entirely unique approach. Verified counters this vulnerability by consistently building upon previous lessons and examples to drive its points home. For example, in a chapter about being mindful of one’s emotional reaction to a piece of information, the reader is asked to recall a story in a previous chapter about the outrage surrounding the “suitcases of ballots” that appeared in Fulton County after the poll workers left for the night. Getting to the truth of a matter about which the entire population has a voice, including certain voices aiming to create outrage, is messy business. One of Verified’s greatest strengths is navigating the mess with its constructivist approach, linking everything together and building from previous learning.

Caulfield and Wineberg hope that readers of Verified will take these lessons and strategies and use them to counter the mass of mis- and disinformation online. Instead of withdrawing from the often-toxic environments of social media, they encourage readers armed with proper verification skills to read, verify, and share high quality information. For the most part, they make it look relatively easy while acknowledging the massive infrastructure designed to bend or disregard the truth. 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. —Stephen Michaels, University of North Georgia