part 1 of a series: research literacy for regular people

Let’s imagine that we are sitting together in your living room chatting over warm cups of tea. We’re going over your pregnancy care options and talking through your questions. At some point, you pull out your phone – or a printed article – and say something like “I read that routine vaginal exams aren’t necessary in labor. Is that true? Can I decline them?”

And my answer more often than not is: “Let’s look at that together.“

This isn’t because I don’t have an opinion. I do. But this isn’t my body, my pregnancy, or my baby – it’s yours. My role is to provide you with the tools you need to evaluate evidence, consider risks and benefits, and to make the decision that fits in with your values and your vision for your pregnancy, birth and beyond. I can’t give you the right answers for you, but I can show you how to find them.

This series is intended to help you build a skill set that you can use through your entire parenting journey as you make health care decisions for yourself and your family. While I hope to be a valued resource as you talk through options, I will never ask you to check your brain at the door. I also won’t place you on the shaky foundation of “don’t believe anything you read” because that isn’t true nor is it empowering. Reliable information is out there, and it is accessible if you know how to look.

Research skills matter whether you’re investigating folic acid, thinking about GBS protocols, or trying to make sense of a TikTok your worried friend sent you at 11 o’clock at night. It doesn’t require a medical degree to find solid evidence. It requires knowing where to look, what you’re looking at, and – maybe most importantly – what questions to ask before you start.

Sensibly, we will begin at the beginning.

not all sources are equal – context is everything

Before we talk about where to find good research, it helps to understand the landscape. The world wide web takes a virtually limitless volume of information, democratizes it, and feeds it through a marketing algorithm that already knows your fears, preferences and biases. This means a TikTok video and a peer reviewed journal article appear equally accessible, equally shareable, and sometimes equally convincing – maybe even more so.

Here’s an honest look at some of the most common sources people encounter, and what each one can and can not give you:

social media – YouTube, TikTok, Instagram

These platforms reward confidence, brevity, and emotional resonance. A ten-minute video breaking down “the truth about gestational diabetes” can rack up millions of viewers regardless of whether an influencer has read a single study, taken research out of context, or is genuinely knowledgeable. You can not tell from the production quality, the follower count, or how certain the influencer sounds whether the information being presented is factual.

That doesn’t mean all health content on social media is rubbish. Often, it is accurate, thoughtful, and created by people with true expertise. But the platform itself has no quality filter meaning nothing separates the careful from the careless.

Before we go any further with something you’ve found, stop and notice the language:

Phrases like “What doctors don’t want you to know,” and “the truth about ___,” buzz words like “toxic,” “dangerous” or shaming and party-line divisive language. These language devices are designed to elicit an emotional response and build distrust before you’ve evaluated a single claim. This kind of language – whether it’s pushing you toward skepticism or compliance – is persuasion, not evidence. It shows up on all sides of these conversations and needs to be recognized.

Personally, I am so averse to emotional manipulation that as soon as I realize that this person is trying to make me think a certain way, I stop listening. When a writer is working hard to tell you how to feel that’s the moment to slow down, take a breath, and look for facts under the propaganda. What is the scientific basis for this claim? Where are the primary sources? Are they available in full text so I can study them for myself? Is the source article actually saying what the writer claims it is saying, or have statements been taken out of context? (I see this one often.)

The principle of watching for persuasive language holds true across all platforms and all sources.

consumer health publications and wellness websites

This category is enormous and wildly uneven. It includes everything from the Mayo Clinic’s health library – which is genuinely reliable and carefully reviewed – to wellness blogs written by people with no formal training, to sites that appear authoritative but exist primarily to sell supplements. A slick looking website tells you nothing about its accuracy, and neither does confident language. In fact, the more arrogant a voice sounds, the more carefully the claims should be evaluated.

one site worth knowing: Evidence Based Birth (evidencebasedbirth.com)

This website blog was founded by Rebecca Dekker, a nurse researcher who provides rigorously studied and thoroughly referenced articles on a wide range of perinatal health topics. Evidence Based Birth is a secondary source meaning it includes the synthesis and summary of original research. It is carefully written for a general audience, and will point you directly toward the primary sources.

Some questions worth asking of any consumer article: Does the site link to its sources? Are those sources journal articles or other consumer publications? Is there a financial interest at play – are they selling something? Is the author identified, and are their credentials relevant to the topic? These questions won’t always give you a clean answer, but they’ll help you calibrate.

editorials and opinion pieces

Medical and scientific journals publish more than just research studies. They also publish editorials, commentaries, and opinion pieces. Experts write these on important topics, but representing one person’s or one group’s perspective rather than a summary of evidence. These can be valuable for understanding debates within a field, but they’re not data. An editorial in a prestigious journal arguing for or against a particular practice is not the same as a study demonstrating outcomes.

This distinction matters because editorials published in reputable journals look nearly identical to research articles. The key difference is in the Methods section – there isn’t one. An opinion piece won’t describe a study population, a data collection process, or a statistical analysis. Journals often label these as “opinion” and their purpose is to create an argument. Authoritative arguments can be a valuable tool for viewing a problem from a different perspective or identifying new questions, but they need to be understood in the proper context.

news media reporting on science

Science journalism ranges in quality from well researched and accurate reporting to intentionally misleading – sometimes in the same article. Good science journalists provide context, quote multiple researchers, link to the original study, and are honest about what a study can and can not show. Less careful reporting strips all that away, leading with dramatic click-bait headlines before presenting biased, out-of-context “research” usually riddled with ads.

One useful habit: when an article cites a study, look for the link. If there isn’t one, that’s worth noticing. If there is, go read it for yourself – That’s what this series is preparing you to do.

primary source literature – what it is and how to recognize it

You’ll hear the phrase primary source used in research conversations, and it’s worth understanding precisely what it means.

A primary source in research is a publication of the original research written by the researchers who conducted the work. These publications describe what the researchers did, what they measured, and what they found. It is the source from which every subsequent article, video, summary, and opinion piece is ultimately derived. When someone says “studies show,” there is – somewhere – a primary source they are (or should be) pointing to.

Everything else is a secondary source: a summary of the primary source, an interpretation of it, a commentary on it, a news article about it. Secondary sources are not rubbish. They can be useful orienting tools, but – like that childhood game of telephone – they are always at least one degree removed from the original research. Each degree of separation introduces the possibility of distortion, oversimplification, or spin.

how to identify a primary source research article

Primary source research articles will have a named author or authors, usually with listed institutional affiliations like a hospital or research institute. They are published in journals, not consumer websites or social media platforms.

A complete research article contains all of these sections: a clearly stated research question, a methods section, a results section, a limitations section, a discussion, and a conclusion. If your article doesn’t include these elements, you are not looking at a primary source.

A quick, practical look: search the title on PubMed. If it comes up, you’re almost certainly looking at peer reviewed literature. If it doesn’t, more investigation may be needed to determine whether this is a validated source.

a note on “peer review”

You’ll hear this phrase often: peer reviewed research. When research is peer reviewed, the study was evaluated by other scientists in the same field before it was published. This means other researchers checked the methods, questioned the conclusions, and agreed it met the standards of the journal. Peer review is not a guarantee of truth (we talk about this in part 3), but it is a meaningful filter. It means people with expertise scrutinized the work.

When someone shares a study with you, or when you find one yourself, it’s worth pausing to ask: was this published in a peer-reviewed journal? A few seconds on PubMed usually answers this question.

where to look for peer-reviewed research

Here are the places I’d send any client who wants to find peer reviewed research.

PubMed (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

This is the main database for biomedical and life science research, maintained by the National Library of Medicine. PubMed indexes millions of studies. You can search by topic, author, journal, date , etc., and it’s free to access. Most entries show at minimum an abstract and many link directly to the full paper.

Start with PubMed with almost anything health related.

PubMed Central (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

Think of this as PubMed’s free full-text library. Not every study on PubMed is available in full for free. Many are behind journal paywalls. PubMed Central is specifically the collection of papers that are freely available in their entirety. If you find a study on PubMed but can’t access the full text, search the same title here.

Cochrane Library (cochranelibrary.com)

Cochrane publishes what are known as systematic reviews. Systematic reviews are rigorous summaries that pull together all the available research on a given question and analyze it as a whole. These studies are often the highest quality evidence available. Many Cochrane reviews are freely accessible, and they write plain-language summaries that are readable for non-researchers.

If there’s a Cochrane review on your topic, it’s worth starting here.

Google Scholar (scholar.google.com)

This platform is less curated than PubMed, but often useful for finding papers that aren’t indexed elsewhere, or for finding an author’s full-text version of a paywalled paper. Researchers are often permitted to post their own work from personal or institutional websites even when the journal charges for it.

ai research platforms – with a few caveats

Many of us are already using AI tools to look things up – either a general assistant like ChatGPT or Claude, or platforms specifically built for research like Consensus or Elicit for providers. These tools have become very useful, but it helps to understand the strengths and limitations of these platforms.

Consensus and Elicit surface peer-reviewed studies and summarize what the evidence is saying across multiple papers at once. This can provide a legitimate starting point when you’re trying to get an overview of an unfamiliar topic. The problems start when you take the summary at face value. AI tools can generate citations that look real but don’t exist, flatten nuance in ways that make uncertain evidence sound settled, and have training cutoffs that mean recent studies are missing entirely. Always verify that a cited study exists before relying on it – PubMed is your checkpoint.

Think of AI research tools the way you might think of asking a knowledgeable friend – it’s a useful starting point, but not the last word.

getting past the paywall

Often in your search, you will be teased by that seemingly perfect, clinically relevant and recently published abstract with the full text locked behind a paywall. Before you give up in frustration, check for a “free full text” link directly on PubMed. If you don’t find this, search PubMed Central, or Google Scholar for the same title. Still nothing? Email the author. The abstract page lists contact information, and researchers almost always say yes – they want their work read. A polite, one sentence request is rarely declined.

before you start searching: knowing why you’re looking

There’s a skill that lies at the foundation of all the others in this series, and it’s worth naming before you open a single search bar.

We rarely arrive at a search engine as a blank slate. When we’re worried about something, feeling pressured by our provider, or when someone we trust says something alarming, we arrive with an intention already forming. When we search with a conclusion already in mind, we tend to notice the studies that confirm it and move past the ones that complicate it. Psychologists call this confirmation bias – and it operates quietly.

A question worth asking before you open the search bar is “What would a genuinely useful answer look like — and what would I do with it?“

That question does something simple but important. It moves you from searching for confirmation towards searching for information. It asks whether you’re looking for evidence to help you decide, or evidence to justify what you’ve already decided. Sometimes just sitting for a moment to check your intentions will reframe the search in a far more productive direction.

knowing the right question: keywords and how you search

Finding the right search terms is a skill that gets easier with practice. Here are a few things that will help:

start with clinical terms

Most interventions, conditions and procedures have a clinical term that researchers use in their papers. “neonatal Vitamin K prophylaxis” will find more relevant results than “Vitamin K shot”. “Cervical examination labor” is the language researchers use when writing papers, not “vaginal checks”. If you don’t know a clinical term, a quick search on a reliable consumer health site like Mayo Clinic, or Medline Plus will usually surface it.

build a lexicon from abstracts that you find useful

When you find a study that seems relevant, look for the terms researchers use to describe their topic. The terms they use in the title, the abstract, the keywords listed at the bottom and so forth. These are the terms other researchers in the field are using. Borrow these words to use in your search.

try MeSH terms

PubMed uses a system called Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to tag and categorize studies. If you search a topic and find a relevant result, look for the MeSH terms listed on that page. Clicking one will surface every study tagged with that term, which can be more reliable than keyword searching alone. It sounds technical, but it’s easy to understand once you’ve seen this.

search the intervention, not the verdict

“Vaginal exams in late pregnancy” is a more objective search term than “why vaginal exams are unnecessary.” Let the research give you the full picture rather than narrowing the focus to generate research that supports a conclusion.

try more than one search

Try different terms and different angles, use synonyms and search multiple databases to surface new studies. If you only ever search one way, you’ll only ever find one slice of the evidence.

follow the references

A good secondary source like Evidence Based Birth has already done some of the search work for you. The reference list at the end of a well-researched article is a curated map to the primary literature on that exact topic. This is a tool I have used frequently in my own studies. Take these citations directly into PubMed or Google Scholar. Often it’s faster than starting a search from scratch.

notice what you’re hoping to find

Before you hit “search,” it’s worth a moment of honesty: am I trying to understand this subject, or am I trying to build a case? Both are human. Only one leads reliably to accurate information.

starting points for common topics

If you’re researching something that comes up often in pregnancy or newborn care – Gestational Diabetes testing, iron supplementation, Rhogam – PubMed is where I’d start. Type the topic into the search bar and you’ll likely find dozens of studies. That abundance can feel overwhelming, but in Part 2, we’ll talk about how to identify the best studies so you’re not skimming abstracts for hours and hoping for the best.

For now, it’s most important to know that real evidence is out there and it’s accessible. What you need is just a little guidance on where to look – and now you have it.

Next up: Part 2 – How to do your own research and how to read a study