If you are going to do your own research, ask yourself the question: would an actual expert researching this field, seeking the unvarnished truth, consider the

If you are going to do your own research, ask yourself the question: would an actual expert researching this field, seeking the unvarnished truth, consider the source I'm looking at seriously? And you'll find there's a hierarchy with something like political blog posts by people purporting to be experts with dubious claims about their credentials at the bottom, to single published studies and scientific journalism sources somewhere in the middle, and things like meta analyses and literature reviews published in well respected journals near the top.