And the article goes on to say that the reason is that it is a secondary source. Similarly to Encyclopedia Britannica.
Both are good starting points for a beginning investigation. Students are directed to primary sources by searching databases. Such as Index Medicus, if the topic were medical. Numerous other such indexes which offer bibliographic control over the world's scholarly publishing. Teachers also will direct students to journals which are peer reviewed.
Such a journal is "Nature."
"Nature" has done a study comparing Wikipedia with Encyclopedia Britannica. Copied below. Having worked for years in libraries, Wikipedia represents a pretty good source for answering reference questions. Libraries over the years have been pretty good about selecting material that represent state-of-the-art knowledge.
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December 15, 2005 3:35 PM PST
Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica
By Daniel Terdiman
Staff Writer, CNET News
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Wikipedia is about as good a source of accurate information as Britannica, the venerable standard-bearer of facts about the world around us, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature.
Over the last couple of weeks, Wikipedia, the free, open-access encyclopedia, has taken a great deal of flak in the press for problems related to the credibility of its authors and its general accountability.
In particular, Wikipedia has taken hits for its inclusion, for four months, of an anonymously written article linking former journalist John Seigenthaler to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy. At the same time, the blogosphere was buzzing for several days about podcasting pioneer Adam Curry's being accused of anonymously deleting references to others' seminal work on the technology.
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After two scandals in one week, Wikipedia's founder decides to make a change to the anyone-can-contribute encyclopedia.
In response to situations like these and others in its history, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has always maintained that the service and its community are built around a self-policing and self-cleaning nature that is supposed to ensure its articles are accurate."
Nature is a prestigious peer reviewed journal.