---
title: "Source criticism"
chunk: 1/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_criticism"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:46:03.309305+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Source criticism (or information evaluation) is the process of evaluating an information source, i.e.: a document, a person, a speech, a fingerprint, a photo, an observation, or anything used in order to obtain knowledge. In relation to a given purpose, a given information source may be more or less valid,  reliable or relevant. Broadly, "source criticism" is the interdisciplinary study of how information sources are evaluated for given tasks.

== Meaning ==
Problems in translation: The Danish word kildekritik, like the Norwegian word kildekritikk and the Swedish word källkritik, derived from the German Quellenkritik and is closely associated with the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886). Historian Wolfgang Hardtwig wrote:

His [Ranke's] first work Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494–1514 (History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514) (1824) was a great success. It already showed some of the basic characteristics of his conception of Europe, and was of historiographical importance particularly because Ranke made an exemplary critical analysis of his sources in a separate volume, Zur Kritik neuerer Geschichtsschreiber (On the Critical Methods of Recent Historians). In this work he raised the method of textual criticism used in the late eighteenth century, particularly in classical philology to the standard method of scientific historical writing. (Hardtwig, 2001, p. 12739)

Historical theorist Chris Lorenz wrote:

The larger part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would be dominated by the research-oriented conception of historical method of the so-called Historical School in Germany, led by historians as Leopold Ranke and Berthold Niebuhr. Their conception of history, long been regarded as the beginning of modern, 'scientific' history, harked back to the 'narrow' conception of historical method, limiting the methodical character of history to source criticism. (Lorenz, 2001)

In the early 21st century, source criticism is a growing field in, among other fields, library and information science. In this context source criticism is studied from a broader perspective than just, for example, history, classical philology, or biblical studies (but there, too, it has more recently received new attention).

== Principles ==
The following principles are from two Scandinavian textbooks on source criticism, written by the historians Olden-Jørgensen (1998) and Thurén (1997):

Human sources may be relics (e.g. a fingerprint) or narratives (e.g. a statement or a letter). Relics are more credible sources than narratives.
A given source may be forged or corrupted; strong indications of the originality of the source increases its reliability.
The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate description of what really happened
A primary source is more reliable than a secondary source, which in turn is more reliable than a tertiary source and so on.
If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased.
The tendency of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of bias. Tendencies should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.
If it can be demonstrated that the witness (or source) has no direct interest in creating bias, the credibility of the message is increased.
Two other principles are:

Knowledge of source criticism cannot substitute for subject knowledge:

"Because each source teaches you more and more about your subject, you will be able to judge with ever-increasing precision the usefulness and value of any prospective source. In other words, the more you know about the subject, the more precisely you can identify what you must still find out". (Bazerman, 1995, p. 304).

The reliability of a given source is relative to the questions put to it.
"The empirical case study showed that most people find it difficult to assess questions of cognitive authority and media credibility in a general sense, for example, by comparing the overall credibility of newspapers and the Internet. Thus these assessments tend to be situationally sensitive. Newspapers, television and the Internet were frequently used as sources of orienting information, but their credibility varied depending on the actual topic at hand" (Savolainen, 2007).

The following questions are often good ones to ask about any source according to the American Library Association (1994) and Engeldinger (1988):

How was the source located?
What type of source is it?
Who is the author and what are the qualifications of the author in regard to the topic that is discussed?
When was the information published?
In which country was it published?
What is the reputation of the publisher?
Does the source show a particular cultural or political bias?
For literary sources complementing criteria are:

Does the source contain a bibliography?
Has the material been reviewed by a group of peers, or has it been edited?
How does the article/book compare with similar articles/books?

== Levels of generality ==
Some principles of source criticism are universal, other principles are specific for certain kinds of information sources.
There is today no consensus about the similarities and differences between source criticism in the natural science and humanities. Logical positivism claimed that all fields of knowledge were based on the same principles. Much of the criticism of logical positivism claimed that positivism is the basis of the sciences, whereas hermeneutics is the basis of the humanities. This was, for example, the position of Jürgen Habermas. A newer position, in accordance with, among others, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Thomas Kuhn, understands both science and humanities as determined by researchers' preunderstanding and paradigms. Hermeneutics is thus a universal theory. The difference is, however, that the sources of the humanities are themselves products of human interests and preunderstanding, whereas the sources of the natural sciences are not. Humanities are thus "doubly hermeneutic".
Natural scientists, however, are also using human products (such as scientific papers) which are products of preunderstanding (and can lead to, for example, academic fraud).

== Contributing fields ==

=== Epistemology ===
Epistemological theories are the basic theories about how knowledge is obtained and are thus the most general theories about how to evaluate information sources.