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How to check whether a source says what you think it says

Anchorcite team · 4 min read ·

Two students reading a page together at a desk

Why this matters

A citation is a promise that the source supports your sentence. That promise is broken more often than most writers expect. A review of fifteen studies of medical research articles recalculated the rate of quotation errors at 14.5%, and found that most of those errors were major: the cited source failed to support the claim, was unrelated to it, or contradicted it. 1

Source 1 · Abstract
“The rate of quotation errors recalculated here is 14.5% (10.5% to 18.6% at a 95% confidence interval). These content errors are predominantly, 64.8% (56.1% to 73.5% at a 95% confidence interval), major errors or cited assertions in which the referenced source either fails to substantiate, is unrelated to, or contradicts the assertion.”

The five-minute routine

Run this for every citation before you submit. It is quicker than it looks, because most sources pass.

  1. Find the exact passage that supports your sentence, not just the abstract.
  2. Check that the population and setting match your claim.
  3. Check the direction and size of the effect.
  4. Note the page, section or table, so you can find it again.
  5. Rewrite your sentence if it says more than the source does.

Worked example

Suppose a draft says: "Most citations in medical papers are wrong." Checked against the passage above, the source says something narrower: 14.5% of the quotations examined misstated their source.

A sentence the source supports: "One review estimated that about one in seven quotations in medical research articles misstates its source." It is less dramatic, and it survives an examiner who opens the paper.

When the passage is not there

If you cannot find a passage that supports the sentence, do not keep the citation and hope. Find a source that does support it, or change the sentence to match what you can support.

If you are not sure a reference exists at all, paste it into the free reference checker. It confirms the paper is real and flags retractions. It cannot tell you whether the paper supports your sentence: that part is the routine above.

References

  1. 1.Mogull, S. A. (2017). Accuracy of cited "facts" in medical research articles: A review of study methodology and recalculation of quotation error rate. PLOS ONE, 12(9), e0184727. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184727