Web Search and Research

Comparing Sources and Viewpoints

Learn to identify agreement, disagreement and evidence gaps and avoid false certainty in this beginner-friendly ChatGPT lesson.

Learning outcomes

  • Explain how to identify agreement, disagreement and evidence gaps.
  • Complete the guided activity safely.
  • Check that you can avoid false certainty.

Before you begin

Write the question, required date range and preferred source types before searching. Plan to open and verify important sources yourself.

Open official OpenAI guidance ↗

Step-by-step instructions

  1. Open ChatGPT Search or Deep Research where available and confirm you are using the intended account or workspace.
  2. Request a comparison table using three supplied sources.
  3. Pause and check privacy, permissions, source material, feature availability and any instruction that affects the task.
  4. Review the result carefully and confirm that you can avoid false certainty.
  5. Save only the useful, verified output and record one improvement for your next prompt.
Ian's practical tip: Start with fictional or non-sensitive information. Treat the first response as a draft, then verify facts, sources, calculations and permissions before using it.

Practical activity

Request a comparison table using three supplied sources. Your expected result is to avoid false certainty.

Good-practice checklist