These days, there is so much information available to us, especially online, and not all of it is accurate, up-to-date or written with our best interests at heart. There’s a lot of misinformation, stale information and simple nonsense out there, and sifting through it all can be time consuming and frustrating.

It might be tempting, when putting together information for a blog post, press release or brochure, to simply include any information that you’ve seen repeated online or in print several times already; after all, if it was in the Guardian, on a well-known supplier’s website, and quoted by a hundred other people who seem to know what they’re talking about, it must be accurate, right?

Unfortunately, misinformation is repeated just as much, in some cases much more often, that accurate information. And nonsense doesn’t become sensible because a hundred people repeated it. There is never any replacement for good, honest research.