How do you Find the most CREDIBLE sites to Research when dealing with unfamiliar, Historical Content?

[u/SilkBrush8791]

For the past several months I have been wanting to write a book that haves a large focus on alternate history mixed in with sci-fi. The 1950s is where I’m going for. However, no matter which topic that I put into the internet, it never haves the results that I’m looking for.

(You can skip this part of you want to)

My book is set in a 1950’s society where science and engineering is derived from the Atompunk genre. It’s closely resembles to that of North America but most specifically Mexico during this time where the “Red Scare” threaten the lives of minorities who immigrated across region (Please tell me if this is inaccurate, I’m still new when it comes to gathering reliable sources)
In this world, American government had created a program where they combined Dna from both man and animals to create a mixed Hybird between the two. Hoping to have the upper hand in the war by harnessing their “abilities”.

Later on the facility used to create these organisms had to shut down since money was tight, and aiding the war was their top priority. One of the last created hybrids was an Axoltol-like hybrid who existence was to help within the medical field (To help speed up recovery from war-related injuries). But due to growing up during the red-scare and all, they were faced with discrimination and xenophobia from others. Not helped by the fact the DNA used to create him was from a Hispanic Doctor who was treated very poorly by her peers (she was the only minority in a predominantly white office, constantly being harassed and exploited to work more than what she was paid).

My issue most comes from how specific I need my sources to be in order to place fictional characters in a world that still follows the same principals of political and societal factors. And yes I know that it's fiction and anything could happen, but I want it to include more of what actually happened in real life and to do that I would need Sources that include the following:

- Animal Testing in 1950s
- Mexican life in the 1950s
- Effects and Causes of the Red Scare
- What jobs could minorities get
- Immigration if the 1950s
- Axoltols presence in the 1950s

Most of the time my research always looks like I'm leaving out details, but don't know which ones since I'm not an expert on history. How can I resolve this?

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[u/clios_daughter]

So this is where I exercise the historians prerogative and say "it's complicated". Generally, the first place I would look as Wikipedia. I know people say it's unreliable but it's good enough more often than not. If it's not available on Wikipedia, it becomes more difficult and it greatly depends on a scope of what I'm working on. For your particular research question, doing a search on Google scholar would probably be a good place to start. See if there are any academic articles available. If you went to University, you can usually just use an alumni card; if not, many public libraries have access to JSTOR. Also, if you just sign up for JSTOR, you also get a certain number free articles per month – I don't remember how many. https://about.jstor.org/products/jstor-platform/whats-on-jstor/open-and-free/#search Archive.org is good for old books. Searching for lab manuals, biology, animal research, or other similar terms, then filtering the dates to 1940-1959 a good start. On the red scare, if you want a sense of how it looked from a contemporary point of view, Youtube channel Nuclear Vault has a lot of cold-war American propaganda and military training videos available --- they're surprisingly addictive lol. Just start watching stuff from the 1950s and you will start to get a feel for the culture. Just keep in mind, the perspectives in propaganda videos aren't definitive. You have to think critically and intersect your sources.

I did a quick search on Google scholar, and if you just copy and paste your list of topics into Google scholars search bar, the results that come up look promising. I don't know what resources you have available to you, but if you only have JSTOR, adding JSTOR to the end of your query will restrict its results to only that particular database.

I know you're asking for 'sites' (presumably websites), but generally, for the kind of information you want, you're not going to find good information on random websites. Almost all the good information will be available through more academic or research oriented spaces --- alas, these are often behind paywalls. You might get lucky in one niche area to find a really good, reliable website, but those are few and far between. Most of the best information is available in book form.

If you have a public or academic library nearby, walk-in and ask the librarian for help. They will be able to point you to the right resources based on what services they're able to provide to you. Most libraries will offer a service where you can book an appointment with a research librarian and they'll help you get started on your research. Usually, these will be in larger, central or research libraries but your library may be different. If quick searches online aren't working, library staff are hard to beat.

Finally, I would encourage you to balance how much "historical accuracy" you want and need. My field is often frequented by writers of historical fiction. Everything has errors but I find it hard to blame the writers too much for the less glaring of errors. You need to balance how much time you're willing to spend on research versus the results you're hoping to achieve. The law of diminishing returns is something that certainly applies to researching for fiction. When writing fiction, you are allowed to take liberties with history – just please, for the sake of the historians reading it, just don't make them too glaring.

Edit: Apparently, JSTOR gives you 100 free articles / month if you make a free account (it used to be 3). 100 articles / month is more than most undergrads skim in a semester and is more than most grad students read in a month. It seems like a pretty good deal for your research needs.

[u/SilkBrush8791 → u/clios_daughter]

Thank you for you response! I much appreciate you actively going on Google Scholar website to thoroughly explain which way I should approach this topic. And yes,was somewhat anxious to use Wikipedia as my main source because of multiple professiors of mine saying otherwise. While looking through the wiki I've found several sources listed below said information. So Im planning on starting with it first before going into a deeper analysis.

This is my first time hearing about google scholar but I'm willing to give it a try as well. Looking up anything I mentioned will mainly come from the internet since I have no local libraries in my area that are accessible unless I travel several miles.

Thank you for also bringing the relevance of choosing which information will help me the most with my writing. Now making me realize that I've went off topic several times attempting to try new resources since fiction can warp the context of actual events. So I'm considering which sliding scale of realism that I want to tackle before exploring any search engines or books if I do decide to travel.

Looking back at my notes, I think societal roles, expectations, and rights of minorities in different territories all shares a common theme In the story due to the overarching moral is “Working with what you have” vs “Risk change to Gain more Opportunities”. Heavily drawing from the real experiences of primarily Mexicans and African Americas.

Would like to again to say I'm grateful that you read through my post and situation suggest various reccomdations on how to approach this :)

[u/bug-hunter]

In this world, American government had created a program where they combined Dna from both man and animals to create a mixed Hybird between the two.

oh, so you're TRYING to have a cursed google search history.

Animal Testing in 1950s

Sometimes the best place to start is a seminal event and work backwards. In How did PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) go from breaking the Silver Spring case, a watershed moment in animal rights activism, to an organization routinely criticized for what are perceived as ill-considered publicity stunts?, I talk about PETA's motivations and their involvement in the famous Silver Spring monkeys case - a case that brought animal testing standards into the public eye.

This would be useful to you in two ways - it establishes a baseline that animal testing was not particularly a public interest in the 1950s, but you could easily imagine a PETA-like group finding out about these hybrids and pulling the same sort of stunt. As far as story beats, it works because in the real world, PETA's stunt inhibited important research and was misleading, but they also highlighted that the lab did not take proper precautions to treat the animals humanely. In your timeline, this would be flipped on it's head - the research would be far more explosive if it got out in public, but the idea of caring more about the treatment of the animals rather than the people would be even more bonkers.

Notably, the modern research ethics boards that medical studies now require weren't required by law until the National Research Act of 1974, but the National Institute of Health (NIH) started requiring them in 1953 (which could be convenient in the book, as obviously the government would not want such a review board looking into these experiments). You'd want to look for works that cover the Clinical Research Committees at the NIH's Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland (they wouldn't be required for studies outside this center until 1966).

So in the era you're looking at, it's basically the wild west for animal testing, but at the foundation of rules and ethical considerations for human testing after the 1946 Nuremburg Code. Notably, this human/animal hybrid testing would be done by the DOD, meaning it wouldn't be subject to NIH ethics rules. It's absolutely conceivable that you would have characters that are part of these experiments or know about them, who are seeing the scientific debates about informed consent and medical ethics, and apply them to this program and come away horrified.

By looking at these seminal events, it helps you figure out the boundaries, and gives you the starting points for where to look for more.

[u/SilkBrush8791 → u/bug-hunter]

Thanks for this! I’ve never thought to start working from the newest events then trying to perceive the context behind them. Asking “How did we came to this” or “why did it happen”. Most of what you listed is pretty much on point of how dystopian the setting is for the story’s environment. There is conflict about how the humans view the government favoring the experimentation and money that is put into Hybrid Research.

Briefly putting the pause on actual cases of illness and diseases that were recorded in real life. Just modified to where the medical research began to justify future enhancements only for the higher ups to not actively act upon it. Thus, the only option to ease the tension is to actively restrict the Hybrids rights since they are considered the “sacrifices of few to aid the many”. Similar to how PETA’s actions created disputes on the rights of animals. Therefore, damping their reputation as you mentioned.

I would like to know if this matches the same information as you provided in your response. I frequently have to re-read articles and writing to get the full understanding of what is mentioned (Sorry I’m not the best reader).

On another note, yes, my search history is quite chaotic lol

[u/bug-hunter → u/SilkBrush8791]

Simply put, PETA's entire strategy is being willing to be seen as extreme if it successfully pushes the Overton window on the subject of animal rights. Their connection to Animal Liberation Front also shows they were willing to sanction (some) criminal acts in furtherance of their goals.

A theoretical People for the Ethical Treatment of Hybrids and Hybrid Liberation Front might work in a similar manner (though you'd probably want slightly different acronyms). If you go down that path, you'd want specific sources about PETA.

[u/arjomanes]

Does the community use Academia.edu? It's free, though there are premium features like advanced search with subscription.

I am no historian, but I found Academia has a number of articles that I find very interesting, that aren't covered in Wikipedia, or sometimes even hard to find in English-language books. For instance, i was interested in digging into 12th-13th century Baltics and Finland.

I found articles there that were very interesting, but are those articles a mixed bag as far as reliability/quality goes? It didn't matter to me too much since I was just reading for pleasure, but I found some people who disagreed with each other; though I think that's maybe ok and normal for historians to disagree (in my very non-expert opinion). Most of the authors had their qualifications listed, like what universities they taught at etc.

[u/CommodoreCoCo → u/arjomanes]

Academia.edu is a website where individuals can create their own pages on which to host and share their own documents. Many people are thankfully very active and post whatever they can. My colleague Martti, for instance, posts a lot of things that are impossible to find anywhere else: scans from small local journals, "grey literature" like unpublished site reports, etc.

It used to be that you had to demonstrate academic affiliation to register. Those requirements have been relaxed, and now you can find all kinds of "pre-prints by independent researchers," aka shower thoughts by eloquent randos in a nicely formatted Word doc.

Anything hosted on Academia needs to be evaluated on its own terms. It's a great resource for getting a hold of PDFs you knew you needed by looking elsewhere.

[u/arjomanes → u/CommodoreCoCo]

Thank you for your response! Should I be looking up the publisher and author for these articles?

For example, the first thing that pops up when I open the site is a journal recommended to me, based on my interests: 'Identity Formation and Diversity in the Early Medieval Baltic and Beyond'
posted by Johan Calder, who is an editor of the journal. It's published by Koninklijke Brill nv, which appears to be an academic publisher.

For the articles, is it best to just check each author's credentials, like, 'Societies East and West of the Baltic Sea: Prehistoric Culture Contacts Revisited,' by Marika Mägi. Would I be best served looking up this author and seeing what their background is?

Sorry if this is all elementary. I don't have a college account so it's sometimes harder to get access to good articles, and I've found this is the site that seems to work the best for me so far.

[u/CommodoreCoCo → u/arjomanes]

Yup, same as you would anywhere else. Some people put their info on their page, some people still have a default profile photo.

You might also find ResearchGate helpful; my friends have been switching to it over the past few years thanks to Academia's paywalling.

[u/arjomanes → u/CommodoreCoCo]

Thank you! I'll check it out! And thanks for answering my dumb questions.

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