Hmm. I don't always check the date because sometimes the date is not relevant. If I'm searching to find side effects that consumers have reported having when on a psych med then I don't check either the source or the date, for example.

Maybe it depends on what kind of information you are after.

That being said, sure there is a lot of uncritical thinking out there...

I guess I'm just reminded of some work that has been done on how people (generally speaking) are pretty bad at reasoning when performance is compared to Bayesian norms. That used to be taken as evidence that people were fairly irrational. Now there is one theorist who (fairly convincingly) maintains that people are tracking relevance rather than probabilities. The upshot of that is that Bayesian norms aren't the standard that people are aspiring to. The same thing could be happening here...