Information About Source Material (Source Material Part 1)
It's generally easy for the publication or author to link directly to original source material or to reference the sources at the bottom of the piece. If source material seems to have been used, but you have no way of knowing the nature of that work or where that work can be found, ask why that very important information might missing. It could be that the piece was hastily or sloppily written and posted. This is can be the case with many social media posts, some blogs, and even online articles. But it could also be because the piece is written for readability, just like popular science books generally don't cite sources directly in the text and sometimes don't even reference sources at the end of the book.
Alternatively, it's possible that the author has neglected to include links or a list of sources because they're trying to hide something (see People & Context module for more to consider about worrying motives and incentives). Recall, though, that it's hard for the reader to detect or prove motives and remember that we'll sometimes infer malicious intent (e.g., that the author is being purposefully elusive) when we hold a negative attitude toward the work or the author.
Seek to maintain a charitable stance—if, for instance, haste and malicious intent are equally plausible reasons for missing sources, go with haste. Hanlon's Razor could be useful mental tool here: don't attribute to malice that which could be explained by incompetence.
In any case, if it's not easy to determine where the author got their information, red flags should go up. It might not be a particularly trustworthy source. More importantly, if you can't access the author's sources, you lack a key tool for assessing the validity of the claims the author is making. You'll have to do quite a bit of extra work to grasp the legitimacy of the ideas that are presented.
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