Thing #6--Dedicated to the Memory of P.T. Barnum or How Not To Be A Sucker to Bogus Websites

For your viewing pleasure, I will take a look at two websites I found rather amusing.  I'll use the Joyce Valenza criteria at the BASIC (elementary) level to critically review them since this is the grade level of students with which I come into contact.

The first site I chose was: GenoChoice  http://www.genochoice.com/   a site that suggests you can create your own genetically healthy child online. 

I'll start with Valenza's first area of critical evaluation:

Content:  Does it offer the content accurately and comprehensively?  It most certainly does not. It makes wild and impossible claims.  One one of the screens the user is asked to place a finger against their compuer screen, placing it on the center oval of a strange looking machine that is supposed to then take a reading of my DNA.  I didn't place anything anywhere, but pressed the scan button.  A lot of mechanical looking things on this "machine" began to swirl and spin.  Here's what it looks like:

                                     

After a few seconds, the "reading" appeared on the screen.  This reading consisted of a list of terrible conditions my DNA has shown that I am likely to pass on to my future children. 

After a plea to not let my future children inherit my genetic shortcomings, this was followed up with a checklist with dollar amounts required to fix or remove these genetic threats:

I was then told I could also add certain upgrades (increase in IQ, sports abilities, artistic abilities, resistance to disease, amongst others) and finally was presented with an invoice of charges with the assurance that they could begin working on my baby within a week.

As for accuracy of information, if the prior wasn't proof enough, various other graphics like the following were used: 

This "testimonial" claims to be able to manage her high blood pressure and even dispense her medication using her palm pilot.

The next area of critical evaluation is : Authority/Credibility

Who is responsible for this site?  What are their credentials?  Who else links to this site?

First of all, it appears that the Dwayne Medical Center sponsors this site, but there is no information on the location or the credentials of this place and when I googled for the other sites linked to this place, I found the following information:

The physician who is supposedly the expert geneticist on staff is identified at Elizabeth Preatner, PhD., M.D.

yet no further credentials are offered for her.  When I googled her I found only several listings for bogus website dtecting...lol, usually not a good sign when choosing a physician.   And finally, upon further exploration I found the following disclaimer:

which says it doesn't endorse any test, treatment or procedure mentioned on the very site it sponsors.

The next area to critically evaluate deals with Bias/Purpose:

The only people I read about on the site that had some credentials were two artists who, upon further checking, were joint presenters in a Cirque De Medicine exhibition called Paper Veins in 2002, featuring several submissions that are meant to be a parody of society's beliefs about nature and medicine.  The information stated, "It's actually a bit of fictional humor put up just before the end of the year 2000 by some MIT grad students to satirize "the human belief of nature as commodity" and to "punish the hypocritical and easily offended by upsetting them, and to amuse those who understand."

The final area to critically evaluate is: Usability/Design:

The site wasn't easy to navigate, there was no clearly marked contents area, nor was there a contact us section.  It was not meant to be incredibly user friendly in finding further information.

This was obviously a bogus site, and I believe that even my elementary school students, with the use of these criteria would be able to identify it as such.   Without the criteria, I am POSITIVE they would have thought this is real. 

  

I had never considered the need to teach kids to be critical evaluaters of things they found online--how foolish was I?  Well, I know now, and this will never be left out of any future teaching or discussions I have with kids when we research or surf the Net for information.