The following are examples of evaluations from previous learners of the OvaPrima web site. They exemplify excellent application of the evaluation criteria. Notice how the evaluators examined each piece of evidence, comparing presented information with alternative sources and perspectives. The reader can clearly see how inaccuracies and support were discovered. Conclusions are explained.
1. What is the author's expertise on the topic?
The author is, Dr. Joel David Forsyte, Chairman of the Board, Ova Prima Foundation. The site purports to be educational in nature, yet it has a domain of ".org". The site does not indicate the educational or occupational background, his resume, research interests, or related job experience to support his credibility. When I searched for Forsyte on Google, Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista, AskJeeves, and Dogpile references all led back to the OvaPrima web site. Since I couldn't find out much about him, I emailed the Ova Prima organization. Of course any response I received from them could be biased, so I have to be aware of that.
Amber Tatnall, librarian at York County Technical College in Wells, Maine, responded informing me, in a letter that was supposedly written by J.D. Forsythe, that he is a librarian. The OvaPrima site "is a creative experiment, designed as a spoof site to use in information literacy classes". Amber is listed as a librarian on the York County Technical College web site. Searching the site for Dr. Forsythe and links to related libraries revealed no additional information on his credentials.
Therefore, one must either accept heresay evidence or assume that Dr. Forsythe is an alias.
2. How reliable is the publisher (site) of the web page?
The OvaPrima Foundation is listed as the funding organization for ovaprimatological research and education to over 100 colleges, universities, and other organizations throughout the world. It's mission is "to support the integration of an ovaprimatological curriculum into primary, secondary, and continuing education by providing professional development opportunities and instructional resources for teachers and educational leaders". The web site designers, Linger-Not Associates, were not found on any other web site. Checking the "View Source" option on my browser revealed the OvaPrima Foundation as the author in the metatag. The OvaPrima Foundation appears to be providing web space for this site only. A search for the OvaPrima Foundation returned a list of Hoax and Humor web sites. The ".org" domain indicates that this is a non-profit group, but just about anybody can get that domain nowadays. Contact@ovaprima.org is provided for communication purposes, though they did not respond. There is no "about us" page.
The publisher and web designers both appear to support this web site alone, not a strong reliability quotient.
3. How reliable are the pages that the author's page link to?
Links are provided on the following pages: home, news, mission, history, education, research, grants, and contact us. The majority of links are to internal pages within the OvaPrima web site. The Royal Geographical Society is a real organization, but it does not refer to the OvaPrima Foundation or ovaprimatological research in any way. The Grants page was the one that seemed the most real because it listed grants to universities that are well known like William and Mary, Knox College, John Hopkins University, and the California Polytechnic Institute, but there were no links to the actual grants that these institutions won. None mention research on chickens or eggs. Links are to both ".org" and ".edu" domains. An article is cited from the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society; this journal does not exist. Neither does the Egg and Poultry conference in Tulsa, the Eggs First militant group, Partnerships in Lifelong Learning, or the American Egg and Poultry Association.
The fact that many links are to non-existent organizations, and real organizations do not validate the content, leads me to believe the evidence is contrived or at least doctored to appear more credible.
4. Do other reliable (or unreliable) pages provide links to the author's page?
Yahoo categorizes the OvaPrima web site as a science humor site. The Alexa plug-in for Internet Explorer showed no related sites. The wikipedia.com site offers a constructed history of the world of Ova Prima, citing only Ova Prima research which "enjoys wide support in many academic and entertainment circles. Actor Gavin MacLeod (captain of the Love Boat) and Oogeneticist Scientist Frederich Blott are active members of OP's extensive outreach programes." The Naperville Community School District, junior high, Naperville, Illinois uses the Ova Prima site in their Fact or Fiction Section. Http://www.museumofhoaxes.com, http://www.improb.com, http://punchline.com, and http://www.dorkfest.org all link to OvaPrima. The American Journal of Archeology does not mention ovaprimatology and its research is contained within the OvaPrima web site rather than linked externally. Get Ready (an Internet evaluation web page), Hot Air, Yahoo Entertainment, and Edd's School n-Science Humor link to OvaPrima. Virginia Tech, University Libraries recommends OvaPrima as a questionable web site useful for practicing evaluation. Using the "What's Related" feature in Netscape, I only came up with six hits - two were the OvaPrima site itself, three were sites teaching about web page evaluation, and one was a lesson plan for K-2 kids to learn about eggs! IMSA links to a page by Ken Winter, a reference librarian from Preston Library, VMI. He has created a site called "Questionable Web Sites" and there is a link to OvaPrima under the heading: Spoofs, Hoaxes, and Myths. Google found 46 hits; except for the site itself, all hits linked to sites that discussed hoaxes.
This web site is obviously not taken seriously by other legitimate web sites.
5. What information on the topic is available from traditional sources, such as newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, or library resources?
The American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster do not list "ovaprimatological" or "ovaprimatology" as words in the English language. Electric Library, the Chicago Tribune, New York Georgia, Britannica, and World Book reveal nothing about the OvaPrima Foundation, palenontology, egg research, or Dr. Joel David Forsyte. I noticed that none of the pictures have been corroborated by other sites either. Searching for information on Craigorn Shippen, Edmund Willard, Phillip Corrs Murray, and the Illampi Badlands only linked to the OvaPrima site and a nonsensical site called the Presurfer Archive. An online atlas of South America did not mention the Illampi Badlands. Barnes and Noble list three books on the foundation's theories, so the subject is not dead.
Though the "chicken and egg controversy" is a real topic, more reliable resources do not support the evidence.
6. How recently was the page published or updated?
The mission statement says that the foundation was adopted in 1876, but the home pages say the foundation was started in 1887. Site information was copyrighted in 2000. Workshops offered are dated 2000-2001. The top of the page contains a welcome message listing today's date, no matter which day I view the contents. Since this is a supposedly a "scientific" web site, keeping the site updated would seem to be very important.
However, I doubt a site like this is maintained as regularly as once per day, especially since the most recent content is a year old.
7. Assess the accuracy of the information in the document.
The web site presents a professional layout. Spelling and grammar are accurate, assuming words like "ovaprimatology" and "ovaprimatological" are actual words. "Olderhostel" may actually be "elderhostel", since the first does not exist online or in dictionaries and encyclopedias. An elderhostel is an educational program for persons over the age of 55; this is aligned with the foundation's purpose. Scientific terms such as "protoarchaeopteryx modesta" were not supported by external researchers. The term "oogenetics" is real.
The content of the site does not support the facts provided. The purpose of the site is to answer the question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" The history section describes the origination of the theory; however, the Shippen evidence is highly suspect. "Additionally, all five of these exquisitely preserved fossils revealed the unmistakable traces of feathers speading out fom the forearms and tail." Feathers do not attach to bone and fossils do not retain skin and feathers intact.
Some of the research is in German. The German texts are kind of funny; it is hard to believe these are paragraphs explaining ongoing research, based on the grammar and choice of words. Grant awards only allow the interest off the money to be invested; this is not common research practice. Database searches of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Poultry Programs and Research, and the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation of the government of Australia reveal little of the same terminology used by the OvaPrima Foundation.
Since the material is not supported by independent research or biological databases, its authenticity remains in question.
8. Does the page show signs of bias in its perspective or presentation?
The foundation is obviously convinced that the egg came first. The evidence tries to sway us to believe that only this conclusion is correct. Its mission is to "spread the word". This conclusion is based on research conducted by Craigon Shipppon; however, an abstract by Matthew Bunker describes how Craigon Shippon "came to faith in God which turned his decision to the chicken possibly came first". The language is not extreme, but it does lean to one side. Being in the ".org" domain indicates an organizational bias rather than an educational bent. Wording was emotional when discussing the primacy of the egg and enthusiastic when outlining educational offerings. $7,500 for a conference appears excessive.
Research was quoted, but used unique terminology. "It was Shippen who uncovered the nest of eggs that came to be known as the Illampi Clutch. This astounding specimen offered evidence that the Protoarchaeopteryx modesta colony was undergoing a genetic mutation. Three of the eggs contained normal Protoarchaeopteryx modesta embryos. The remaining two embryos, however, displayed some unusual characteristics, including the only known instance of a furcula or fused clavicle in a theropod."
The last footnote is not a citation but a commentary. Some of the lesson plans are inappropriate for the ages recommended. The web is often used for comparing and contrasting conflicting information. We want it to be biased. It is interesting to compare stories from different sources just to see the different points of view. The OvaPrima web site presents ideas and opinions as facts.
If this were a real scientific field of study, other sites would offer similar evidence or at least alternate opinions. This is not the case.
9. What evidence is provided to support opinions and conclusions expressed in the document?
Data on the web site provides a history of the issue and existence of the foundation. Generic email and snail mail addresses are provided to contact the foundation to check any information (e.g.: contact@ovaprima.org, grants@ovaprima.org). Author credentials are omited. Links to universities supposedly conducting related research are valid institutions yet do not cooraborate the opinions or conclusions expressed by the foundation. The OvaPrima web site lists several published works, but they deal with medical and scientific studies of the egg or the egg in relation to dinosaurs and don't appear to relate to the question the foundation wants answered. Citations are missing dates. The journals are not easily accessed. The American Journal of Archaeological Oogenetics, American Journal of Archeology, and Journal of Gynecology, Obstetrics and Natural Childbirth are not even real publications. The research project where ladies in labor were asked to use an egg as a focal point for concentration during contractions struck me as humorous. No contact information was provided for other researchers in the field. Searches using technical terminology resulted in the conclusion that the OvaPrima Foundation uses a unique vocabulary.
As a funder of all research cited, that research is inheritantly biased. The results of experiments are abstracted, but the actual experiments are not explained. Data is qualitative rather then quantitative in nature. On the research page there is an abstract about the quote writer:"A biography of radio commentator and amatuer scientist Phillip Corrs Murray and his involvement in the Hawkes-Murray Trial, which was held in Parton City, Illinois in 1927. Murray, an amateur lawyer, electrified the nation with his rousing defense of the separation of church and state. Murray viewed himself as a "common man", but nevertheless he stood tall as a defender of democracy in a time and place where such arguments were viewed as atheistical and even traitorous. The article includes photographs of the famous "proto-chickens" that Murray, an amateur modelmaker, constructed as exhibits for the trial." First of all, modern maps do not list a Parton City in in the state of Illinois. Second, I wonder that a radio commentator in 1927 would have time to also be an amateur scientist, lawyer, and modelmaker, let alone the expertise. Third, what does separation of church and state have to do with the chicken and egg controversy?
The fact that there are no valid, external references to support the stories and scenarios presented leads one to conclude for the illegitimacy of the site.
10. Can you contact someone with expertise in the area to validate the opinions or conclusions expressed in the document?
My husband is a veterinrian, but when I tried to ask him about the topic, he wondered how I could get college credit for pursuing info like this. Our school libraries have many books on chickens and eggs, since our kindergarten students study eggs for two months, but none mention the OvaPrima Foundation. Local science teachers laughed at the question. Both Shippen and Williard are deceased. Research cited either does not exist or does not address the theory in question. Scientists, entertainers, and lawyers referenced appear to be fabricated. Even articles written in foriegn languages appear to be hoaxes. Contacting universities conducting grant funded research would be possible but time consuming and probably biased due to the funding source. Scientific institutions, such as the Field Museum in Chicago, may have access to additional research or be familiar with the OvaPrima Foundation. Since the Royal Geographical Society is referenced, contacting them might prove informative. "Ask an expert" services are provided on many scientific web sites; perhaps they could be of assistance. A friend who works with farm research suggested checking the farm bureau genetic research sites. I emailed the research manager of the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation of Australia. Her response was, "While we acknowledge the existence of the OvaPrima web site, we can not acknowledge it as a legitimate source from which one would want to access scientific evidence."
Since so many legitimate organizations describe this web site as a hoax, it seems fruitless to continue researching the topic.