8.7 Website Evaluation -- Practice -- analysis

Evaluating websites can be a bit tricky. While all three would be useful, appropriate, and authoritative, the Penn State website is the most timely of the three, offering research as recently as May 2006 (whereas the NASA article is 1997, and the NOAA article was written up in 2005 about the 2004 hurricane season).

Keeping in mind that timeliness is an important factor in scientific research, a case could still be made for using each of these sources as research support. If you looked at the actual sites, you might have noticed that the NOAA article had a number of references to other studies and offered an overview of research at the time, whereas the Penn State site was just a summary of research done by 2 experts. Each site could refer you to other promising resources on the connection between global warming and hurricanes. One might also make the case that the first article summary, although over a decade old, might offer a "baseline" by which to compare current research, or insight into whether scientific forecasting was on or off the mark.

Pictured: Hurricane Floyd, Satelite image, Photo courtesy of NOAA/NCEP http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hurricane/index.shtml

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