The New York Times published an article claiming that red meat may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Following the three moves described in Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers, I started by going to duckduckgo.com to see if this claim had already been fact-checked. Upon using the search term provided for us and plugging in “meat increases heart risk,” I found a snopes article that I thought would be relevant. However, upon reading it I found that the claim the article was fact-checking was the opposite of the claim from the New York Times article. It turns out that this topic is a seemingly controversial one, as some experts have claimed that the consumption of red meat has no negative effects on a person’s health, and some experts have claimed that it does have negative effects. Regardless, I was focusing on the claim made in the New York Times article, which was that red meat adversely affected a person’s cardiovascular health. I also saw that the snopes article had been written over a year before the New York Times article, so I decided to move onto Move 2.

For going upstream, this article proved to have a seamless path to the source of the claim. In the second paragraph of the New York Times article, the study—which was published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal—was visibly linked for easy access. When I followed the link to the JAMA Internal Medicine study, it was clear that, according to the site, this was the authoritative source of the study. Language such as “original investigation,” “online first,” and the fact that no other publication was cited were clear signs that this was the original source of the claim. However, the question of whether or not the journal was a reliable source was still a valid concern in terms of being thorough with the fact-check.

To start the process of reading laterally, I used Google Scholar to search for JAMA Internal Medicine. I did not find anything of relevance as most of the results were other articles and studies done by JAMA Internal Medicine. Next, I used the search term “JAMA Internal Medicine -site: JAMA Internal Medicine” so that none of their articles would come up in my results. However, I still did not find anything of relevance. My next move was to go to Wikipedia and to see if I could find more information on the journal. Upon consulting Wikipedia, I found that the journal is peer-reviewed, which is an ideal factor when it comes to articles that include conducted studies. I also found that the journal had an impact factor of 20.768 in 2018 and that it was “ranked 6th out of 160 journals in the category ‘Medicine, General & Internal.'” This being a respectable ranking shows that the New York Times’ claim that meat may increase of risk of cardiovascular disease at the very least comes from a reliable source, and therefore is most likely true.

With the claim that I investigated during this fact-check deriving from the New York Times, there was not much doubt in beginning the process that it came from a reliable source. However, there is still the chance, no matter how credible the source is, that the claims being made in the article are not completely true. When fact-checking this claim, the transition from move to move was smooth due to the proper citing and links supplied in the New York Times article. Move 1 was not a significant part of this particular process because no previous work had been done to fact-check the claim. So, Move 2, going upstream, proved to be the most influential in finding out the source and the reliability of the claim. Move 3 was significant in finding out the source’s credentials and verifying whether or not the claim should be taken seriously or not. Overall, each move contributed something in finding out whether the claim was true or false.

As for the claim being true or not, it’s a difficult call to make due to expert’s divide when it comes to the subject of red meat being unhealthy or ok to eat. Therefore, I can’t make a clear call based on the sources I found. However, what I can conclude from this fact-check is that the sources from where this claim came are reliable sources with intent to inform the public of accurate information.